“I’m guessing that you guys also got some new message,” Yang asked.

“I don’t think it’s just us,” said Yin, looking off to the side.

Following her gaze, Soze realized that seemingly every player in the area was either confused by something or staring at their menus. Soze felt a chill run down his spine. ‘The last time there was a huge announcement like this was when we were first trapped.’

“You guys don’t think the game is going to get worse do you?” Yang asked numbly.

“B-but why,” Yin’s eyes widened slightly. “Did we do something wrong?”

Soze took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter, reading a message isn’t going to change anything. Let’s see what it says.”

The girls nodded, and the three opened the notification.

All three of them immediately flinched at the interface being gold instead of its normal blue, reminding them of the system-wide statement from Dr. Zheng on day one of their imprisonment. They read further, and while the message seemed to be from the game system and not from Zheng himself, what they read was still rather intimidating.

[VERSION UPDATE 1.01.02 INITIALIZED]

[DUE TO A HIGH VOLUME OF PLAYER DISCONTENT THE SYSTEMS OF NEW EDEN ONLINE WILL BE UNDERGOING A MAJOR OVERHAUL]

[SATISFYING ALL DEMANDS IS NOT VIABLE WITH CURRENT HARDWARE LIMITATIONS AND SO THE PLAYER BASE WILL BE ASKED TO VOTE ON WHAT FEATURES WILL BE OPTIMIZED/IMPLEMENTED]

[PLAYERS MAY CHOOSE UP TO {5} FEATURES FROM THE LIST BELOW AND RANK THEM WITH {1} BEING HIGH PRIORITY TO {5} BEING LOW PRIORITY]

[WHEN THE VOTING PERIOD ENDS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY FEATURES WILL BE IMPLEMENTED]

[THE NUMBER OF IMPLEMENTED FEATURES WILL VARY DEPENDING ON RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS]

[PLAYER PARTICIPATION IS HIGHLY ENCOURAGED TO ENSURE THE GREATEST OVERALL IMPROVEMENT OF THE NEW EDEN ONLINE EXPERIENCE]

[VOTING PERIOD WILL END IN 23:58:37 OR WHEN ALL VOTES HAVE BEEN CAST]

[BUG FIXES AND BALANCE PATCHES WILL ALSO BE IMPLEMENTED AT THE DISCRETION OF THE PIONEER SYSTEM]

Scrolling down, Soze saw a list of dozens of new game features. Just a few that he noticed while skimming it included a pain reduction option, an inventory system, a party system to let players share EXP without direct combat, and even things like a magic system or no longer needing to sleep.

“This…is this actually a good thing?” Yang asked, a smile starting to form on her face. “I mean, all of these things would make things so much better!”

“No, not quite,” Yin said. She had calmed down and was now quickly reading through the whole list.

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Look at the seventeenth feature.”

Yang curiously looked for the one her sister mentioned, a somewhat difficult task considering the system hadn’t actually numbered them, but when she got close her face paled as she realized what option Yin was talking about.

“A disease system?! Why?!”

Sure enough, there was indeed a proposed feature to let players and animals contract diseases or infections that would spread like they would in reality. Looking through the list again, they began to notice other dangerous features such as increased monster spawning, increased rewards for killing players, and surprisingly a nutrition feature.

“I do recall Aman saying that our food intake wasn’t the most healthy with our focus on meat,” Yin explained. “It’s good to know that we don’t need to worry about that anymore.”

“But wouldn’t that mean that if this feature is picked we all might start dying of malnutrition?” Yang asked.

“We can only hope people have enough sense to not pick it,” Soze commented, still reading through the list.

“But if these features are meant to counteract player complaints, wouldn’t that mean that at least a few people have requested them?”

“Tsk, you always get a few people that complain about realism in games,” Yang scoffed, “I guess even a death game won’t stop some idiots.”

“We can only hope that those options don’t get too many votes,” Soze said. He then closed his menu and stood up. “I’m going to try and get people to gather in The Pit, it’s probably best if we can all coordinate our votes.”

“I don’t think that will be as effective as you think Soze,” Yin said.

Soze frowned. “Why not? Every vote counts.”

“Perhaps, but we can at most focus one hundred and fifty people out of a voting pool of more than one billion. Discussion certainly has its merits, but don’t think it will be worth the effort.”

“Yeah, honestly I’m going to need time to read through all of these,” Yang said, “I might swing by The Pit to hear people talk about ideas, but I'm just going vote for what I want.”

“...Alright, fine. I guess I’ll see you guys later.”

~~~~~

The village was in complete disarray when the announcement was released. Even when the initial confusion settled the place was buzzing with activity. The Kitchen and the Workshop were both unnaturally still as players talked amongst themselves about what each feature did and what they should pick. All the players who had been out hunting at the time of the announcement had rushed back to the village, and Loran managed to make it back a few hours before nightfall along with the other players from the camp. Absolutely no work was done in the village as the version update had captured the focus of every person trapped in New Eden Online.

Even though there was a risk of a dangerous feature being added, the players were all very excited about the update. Everyone was confident that most people wouldn’t vote for the negative features, and the benefits of the many positive features made them all feel like their situation would be improving from here onward.

~~~~~

Loran, Yin, Yang, Alexx, Soze, and Zed were all sitting together in The Pit, eating from a large bowl of seasoned jerky. It was late, the nightly Pit Meeting had ended nearly an hour ago, but none of them felt like they could go to sleep, the excitement from the version update was pushing any exhaustion from their minds. Even Loran couldn’t sleep despite his exhaustion from having hiked back to the village after his hunting trip.

“I still can’t believe all of you are voting for the tutorial feature,” Zed said. “Soze and Yin I get, but I thought you three were real gamers.”

“If this were a normal game sure,” Loran said slowly, “but as much as I like figuring things out for myself I’m not going to make things harder for myself in a death game.”

“Seriously,” Yang agreed, stuffing a handful of jerky into her mouth. Suddenly her eyes widened and she nearly choked as he tried to say something. “Z-Zed, you didn’t vote for any of those bullshit features like disease or increased spawn rates right?”

“Why would I vote for diseases?” he asked, almost sounding insulted. “I’m not interested in something I can’t stab. I did vote for the increased spawn rates though.”

“Goddamn it,” Yang said while Yin and Soze shook their heads.

“I mean, I voted for it too,” Loran said, Alexx nodding along. “It’ll help us deal with the overhunting problem, so why not?”

After hearing the other two agree with Zed, Yang seemed calmer about the situation but wasn’t entirely convinced.

“You’re not concerned about us getting overrun by predators?” Yin asked.

Alexx shrugged. “Not really.”

“We can already handle basically everything the woods have thrown at us. As long as it’s not a ten times increase or something crazy it’ll be fine.” He paused in thought for a moment before continuing. “I guess I’m a little concerned about the Iron Ants pushing their territory further south, but there’s still nearly a hundred miles between us and them.”

“Alright, but if I get killed by a Drone in my own bed, I’m blaming you idiots.”

“So what else did you guys pick?” Soze asked.

“From top to bottom I picked the magic system, the tutorial, increased spawn rates, the player chat, and the description catalog,” Loran said.

“Okay,” Yang said slowly. “I understand most of that, but why the player chat?”

“I’m hoping there’s some kind of global chat function. If we can get that we’ll be able to communicate with other players and maybe start working together on a larger scale. What about you?”

“I picked the tutorial, sensory modification, the inventory, the party system, and the HUD,” Yang said.

“What’s HUD?” Alexx asked, confusing the rest of them.

“How do you not… do fighting games not have heads-up displays?” Loran asked.

“Oh! You mean like hit points?” he said, making the connection. “I guess I never heard it called anything but hit points or a health bar before.”

“So what precisely is a heads-up display?” Yin asked.

“A lot of games will put important information in your line of sight at all times,” Soze explained. “My survival sims would have things like hunger and temperature meters, and sometimes a compass.”

“Basically, although a lot of RPGs display a bunch of other stuff,” Zed explained. “Now that I think about it, realistic fighting games wouldn’t have much use for a detailed HUD.”

“Neither would NEO really,” Loran said as he thought about it. “I guess we could have things like a compass, but most HUDs would be for things like ammo in an FPS(1) or objective trackers for quests. We don’t have anything like that.”

“Yeah, I guess the HUD sounds like a lame choice now,” Yang rubbed the back of her head before giving them a shrug. “Still, with how much damage I take I’d like to know exactly how close to death I am.”

“Definitely, I hate having to guess how much SP I have left mid-fight,” Alexx said. “Anyway, I picked the inventory, the tutorial, the spawn rate, the dueling system, and the mini-games.”

They all turned to look at Alexx judgementally. “Really? Mini-games?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t really sure what else to pick, and you guys can’t tell me things don’t get boring around here in between hunts.”

“There is cornho-”

“Fuck cornhole,” Yang, Loran, and Zed all said simultaneously.

“Yeah,” Alexx chuckled, “there just isn’t much to do around here that isn’t work.”

“You’re not wrong,” Soze sighed, “it just feels a little wasteful. These votes are important.”

“Yeah, but none of this is really life-changing,” Zed said. “It’s not like one of the features was a logout function.”

Yang groaned. “If only life could be that easy. Like, it said that this whole thing was in response to ‘player discontent’ or whatever. A logout button would definitely help with that!”

Alexx and Loran let out strained chuckles, sharing Yang’s sentiments. Loran then turned to Zed. “I’m just going to guess you picked every combat feature that’s going to make things harder for us?”

“Aww, you know me so well,” he said with mock sweetness, giving Loran a light shove. “Yeah, I picked the dueling system, increased spawn rates, the exotic enemies feature, boss monster templating, and for removing the enemy level cap.”

“What the hell does the exotic enemies thing do anyway?” Yang asked, “I didn’t bother to read through it.”

“Basically it’ll let the game make more supernatural enemies,” Zed explained. “Like instead of just wolves with healing moss we may get stuff like fire wolves or maybe even dragons.”

“Ah yes,” Yin said, her expression unamused, “because we needed monsters even more dangerous than the canine-sized ants.”

Zed simply shrugged with a small smile.

“Oh yeah, how did your hunting trip go Loran?” Alexx asked, realizing that he had forgotten to ask sooner in all the excitement.

A smug grin started to spread across his face. “I suppose it went alright.”

Yang, Alexx, and Zed were glaring at him now.

“Loran, how much EXP do you have currently.”

“One hundred and twenty-four thousand.”

“BULLSHIT!” Yang and Zed shouted as Loran began laughing uproariously. Soze, Yin, and Alexx simply stared at him, their eyes nearly bulging out of their skulls.

“I get that you’ve been hunting non-stop for like three weeks, but really, that much?” Alexx asked.

“Wait, if that’s how much EXP you have, what level are you currently?” Yin asked.

“I’m staying at level 24 for now. Better stats won’t do anything game-changing and I don’t want to fall into the same trap these two did.”

Alexx and Zed sighed defeatedly at the reminder. While they were overseeing Loran with his solo hunts they had found and killed a few Iron Ants on the way back, only to discover that they had received drastically less EXP than they should have. Checking their notifications revealed a very upsetting message.

[CREATURE (Iron Ant Drone) HAS BEEN DEFEATED]

[LEVEL GAP HAS REDUCED EXP REWARD TO 1]

Simply put, their levels were getting too high for them to keep gaining levels from most enemies. They had always known that their growing levels reduced EXP rewards, as was the case in most RPGs, but after a certain threshold, the reduction increases exponentially. They had already been experiencing this with other animals, and now it was happening with Iron Ants too.

After the massive amount of EXP Zed and Alexx gained after the battle against the Drone army and the Soldier, both of them shot up to levels 32 and 34 respectively. They didn’t know how much more they could go before Iron Ants stopped giving them EXP entirely, but if they did then there wouldn’t be anything else in the valley that could give them EXP!

“At least you guys can hunt the Drones pretty easily now,” Loran said. “Once we get a few more people with iron weapons we can probably start pushing into their territory. Hunting them in mass should still give plenty of rewards.”

“I guess, but it’s still weird, right? Why are we getting stuck like this?”

Yang shrugged. “It’s just bad game design.”

Zed rolled his eyes. “You can’t just blame everything on bad game design.”

“No but we can right now,” Loran said. “The more I think about it, it seems like NEO is more like a simulation that just has RPG mechanics thrown on top of it. Definitely, a cool idea that makes it hyper-realistic, but really bad if you want a game with steady difficulty progression or any sense of direction.”

Zed’s face scrunched up. Until now he had been enjoying the strange jumps in difficulty, but if the opposite was going to start happening he was worried that his time in NEO would be less enjoyable.

He opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by the golden notification screen opening on its own.

[VOTING PERIOD HAS ENDED DUE TO ALL VOTES BEING CAST]

[PIONEER SYSTEM WILL BEGIN THE VERSION UPDATE]

[PLEASE BRACE FOR INTENSE RESOURCE USAGE]

[5]

[4]

“Brace?” Yang asked. “What the hell is that supposed to-”

Before Yang could finish, the counter hit zero and she found herself unable to continue speaking. No one in the entire village could mutter a whisper, or even breathe for that matter. Not one living thing across all of New Eden Online could do much of anything as they were overcome and overwhelmed with an indescribable terror. It was a fear so great that it became physically painful. It was a feeling of impossible smallness, but above all, every nerve in their bodies and every sense they had was screaming that the source of this feeling was utterly and absolutely wrong. That whatever it was, it should not be able to exist.

After a brief ten seconds, seconds that felt like an eternity, the sensation vanished as quickly as it had come over them. Everyone in the village lay still and silent for a moment, still shaken by the terrible feeling.

“....aaaAAAAHH!”

A single person screamed, and in an instant, the village was alive with panic. Most were yelling confused questions, desperately hoping that someone, anyone, anything, could explain what just happened. Many were unable to form questions, reduced to screaming incoherently in their panic. Some were simply silent, lying on the ground or staring into space, still processing what they had experienced. The remaining few were racking their brains, trying to understand what just happened.

“Fucking hell….what was that…” Loran lay still, his body unwilling to move as his mind frantically searched for an answer.

“AAAAAAAA!”

“Y-Yin! P-please calm down!” Yang had pulled her screaming sister into her arms, desperately trying to calm her even as her own hands were still trembling. Yin quickly became quiet but was staring, wide-eyed into empty space.

“Is-is everyone okay!” Soze yelled, the first player to get to his feet. “Please, if anyone’s hurt say something!”

“Haaa… hooo… haaa… hooo…” Alexx was motionless, eyes closed, slowly steadying his breathing.

“That… that was the Skill system,” Zed said. Loran’s eyes widened as he made the connection as well.

“W-what do you mean?” Yin asked, her expression slowly calming down.

“That feeling you get every time you learn a new Skill, it was like that but,” Loran’s body reflexively tried to curl up as he remembered the sensation, “but GOD that was so much worse.”

This is what the system meant when it was referring to ‘resource requirements.’ However it worked, the Pioneer System produced that strange sensation as a byproduct, and this was just the same thing cranked up to 1,000 because it was altering the entire game server.

‘What kind of software from Hell could possibly cause something like this?’