“This is bad,” Pan Feng whispered.
“Do you think he heard us?” Hwa Xiong whispered back.
“I’m standing just several meters away from you. What’s the point of whispering?” Feng Bujue said.
“Yeah… Ha ha… you have a point,” Pan Feng mumbled.
Feng Bujue interrupted him. “Before you try to come up with some nonsense to lie to us, let me state this. I don’t think you are cheating players because you don’t act like that. Obviously, you are working for Dream Inc. You’re probably the GM, but either way, I don’t think it is wise for you to have your job exposed.”
His eyes scanned the duo, telling them to pay attention to what he had to say next. “Tell us the truth, and we can cooperate with you and maintain the secrecy when everything is over. Or else… I might add my own spin to what I’ve seen today, split the story into ten parts, and release them in serial format on all the game forums.”
“Er… Wait a moment… let us discuss this first,” Hwa Xiong replied.
“Go ahead,” Feng Bujue said and turned to put some distance between them. The two walked away from the broken window to the corner of the office and whispered among themselves. About five minutes later, they returned.
Pan Feng told Feng Bujue and Xiao Tan, “Alright, what do you want to know?”
“What is your real identity, what mission are you currently up to, and what is going on with this scenario?” Feng Bujue fired the questions quickly; he had been thinking about them.
“Your guess earlier is correct; we are the GMs,” Hwa Xiong admitted. “We came to this scenario to deal with a string of trash codes called the Anomaly.
“With regards to the plot of this scenario… You’ve seen it yourself. The thing that we were chasing earlier was the mutant of Professor Ashford. The plot is as follows… This Ashford is anti-human. After stealing Virus Z from the lab, he added it to a concoction that he had prepared earlier and used a device on the roof of this building to infect everyone in the city.”
“Is that why the zombies inside the lab are all normal zombies but those outside became BW Zombies?” Feng Bujue asked.
“Actually, as the mutated form of the normal zombies, BW Zombies are designed to be stronger than normal zombies. They might not be the part currently, but once night falls and without the help of garlic, a player of your level will have serious difficulty dealing with them,” Hwa Xiong said.
“Then, what about the Zombie Werewolves that we ran into earlier?” Xiao Tan asked.
“Based on the plot, the system had to assign a few mini bosses around the building,” Pan Feng replied. “The setting for Zombie Werewolf is that ’the infected has a three in ten thousand chance to become a stronger and more stabilized mutant’.”
“You sure have access to plenty of information,” Feng Bujue commented. “The information of the monsters, the paths to clear the scenario, when the event will be triggered and the scenario map, those should be accessible to you, right?”
“Not only that, the coordinates of the players, their current status, the skills inside their skill tab, the effects of their titles, and so on—we can look at that whenever we like from the menu,” Pan Feng explained. “I remember you should be infected, right? You managed to find the serum at the lab on your own? I’m impressed.”
“You flatter me,” Feng Bujue replied, “but I believe there is one thing that you cannot access. And that is the ’Anomaly’ that you mentioned earlier, yes?”
Hwa Xiong sighed. “If we could, do you think we would waste so much energy and take the time to do the quest?”
“After clearing the scenario, us normal players will be transported out while you should be able to ignore the teleportation countdown. So, after we leave and gain the reward, that is when your real job begins. Without the interruption from other players, you won’t need to hold back and find the Anomaly in the world where the scenario has been completed and deal with it,” Feng Bujue deduced.
“Oh… Not bad, just a few sentences, and you manage to come up with all that already.” Hwa Xiong nodded.
“I think I know everything there is about you two and this scenario already.” Feng Bujue reached out to touch the back of his neck and stretched to ease some pressure. “Please tell me about the Anomaly in details.”
“Even if you know, it is of no use to you because you cannot be of any help,” Pan Feng said. “If I were you, I would get the GM to help me to find that escaped mutant, kill it, and then earn some easy reward.”
“Please tell me the details about the Anomaly,” Feng Bujue said with a smile. “Or else I won’t be able to stop myself from writing a strongly-worded and highly instigative letter to Atobe-sama and ’So hard to find a name’ to tell them that, due to the technical failure of the gaming company, they were killed by some kind of strong monster that shouldn’t exist in the scenario in the first place.”
“Hey… but how did you know that they were killed by the Anomaly?” Pan Feng asked.
“It’s simple cause and effect,” Feng Bujue said. Pan Feng and Hwa Xiong were confused by this answer.
“Hmm… Alright fine,” Hwa Xiong said. “It’s okay to share this with you. Actually, the Anomaly will be discovered by the players sooner or later. Even though the chance of the players running across them is very small, the company is still preparing to release a statement during the open beta to explain the situation in more acceptable terms.”
He looked around and said, “Come with me.”
Then he walked toward the coffee table, leading the rest with him.
He walked to the cubicle that was closest to the machine and picked up the can of coffee on the table. He opened the lid and pointed at the coffee powder that was three quarters full. “Imagine these coffee powder as the data. One of the powder particles needs to be destroyed by the system because it is an uncontrollable trash code. This particle is continuously moving through this whole can of powder, changing its location. How would you separate it from other coffee powder?”
“It’s impossible,” Feng Bujue answered instantly.
“You’re right,” Hwa Xiong replied. He reached into the can and grabbed a handful of powder, placing it in the middle of his palm. “The only thing the system can do is make use of every usable moment to grab the set of data and all the data surrounding it at the time like this, holding them in its hand.”
He raised his fist slightly, and the powder slipped through his fingers. “Of the fistful of powder that I have, I only need one single particle, but the rest of the powder is important to the system as well. I can’t toss everything away for the sake of one particle, and I can’t hold onto this fist of powder for too long because the particle that I want to destroy might slip through my fingers at any moment.”
“So… the system uses this data to come up with a scenario,” Feng Bujue extrapolated. “To materialize the Anomaly from their code form into an actual monster and then send you guys in to kill it, incapacitate it so that it wouldn’t escape, and then the system will be able to clean it up while it cleans up the scenario.”
“That’s exactly it.” Hwa Xiong grabbed a cup and found a tub of sugar cubes. “This cup is the shell of the scenario, and you players are like these sugar cubes. When you’re queuing up for the scenario and heard the system say, ’the team size has been randomized: a team of six’…”
He tossed the coffee powder into the cup. “The data was tossed inside the shell, but at this stage, they are merely different base elements, like air, water, dust, and so on… Then, six players including yourself arrived at the entrance of this scenario and respectively heard the announcement, ’Your team has joined the team queue. Currently searching for other readied players or teams’. At that moment…”
He tossed away two cubes and said, “Two of them were replaced by me and Brother Pan. The two were instantly sent into another queue, so they did not personally experience this shift.”
“We GMs normally work in pairs, and once an Anomaly’s code is cornered inside a starting scenario, we are sent in to intercept that team,” Pan Feng said. “The players we replaced are normally a team of two or two single players, and they will not be in the same group as the other players in the scenario.”
“What happens if you run into a group of five or six playing together?” Xiao Tan intercepted.
“If it’s a group of five, we will replace that solo player and send in a single GM. If it’s a group of six, then there’s nothing we can do but let them face the Anomaly on their own. But from the start of the server, there have been no reported cases where a group of six friends ran into an Anomaly.
“By the way, the amount of data ’captured’ by the system is only usable to generate a six-person scenario, so you don’t need to worry about running into the anomaly in a scenario designed for two to five players or in other modes.”
“Doesn’t this mean that the six-people team mode is very dangerous?” Xiao Tan gasped.
“Do you think there are so many Anomalies walking around?” Pan Feng laughed. “This kind of anomalous data’s ratio is about one in a million. During internal testing, the two sets of servers for sleep mode and non-sleep mode ran continuously for thirty days, and only ten Anomalous codes were formed.”
“In any case, when you hear, generating the scenario…” Hwa Xiong tossed all the sugar cubes into the cup and walked to the coffee machine to add hot water. The coffee powder dissolved into liquid. “All these elements form into a normal scenario according to your level, combat ability, mastery type, and previous performance. Things like plot and world-building are formed during this moment as well. The Anomaly will get mixed inside this scenario and materialize after combining with other basic data.”
Feng Bujue thought about it and asked, “Then… just how powerful is an Anomaly?”
“Ha ha…” Pan Feng laughed. “You’ve witnessed our power level, right?”
“I have,” Feng Bujue answered.
“Do you know why we need to work in pairs to deal with the Anomaly?”
“Because working solo might get you killed,” Feng Bujue replied.
“You got it.” Pan Feng nodded. “It might show on your menu that we’re level thirteen, but we’re using the GM account, and our combat ability is actually about ten levels higher than what is shown. Even so, this does not mean that we’re unstoppable. Take for example the boss from earlier. When it jumped off the building to escape, we could not do anything. If we followed it, then we would have died like a normal player.”
“Then why didn’t the company raise the power level of the GMs?” Xiao Tan asked. “Make it look like you’re level thirteen but you’re actually as powerful as a level fifty.”
Hwa Xiong raised the cup. “Two sugar cubes can be placed inside this cup. Do you think it can fit two watermelons?”
“Oh…” Xiao Tan nodded, seemingly understanding it.
“Our account will not level up, and we’re responsible for the scenarios between level five to fourteen. The situation for the other GMs is no different from us; they have extremely powerful combat abilities,” Pan Feng said. “Since you’ve been clued in on the existence of the Anomaly, if you run into one later… even though the possibility of that is close to zero, if that happens, please cooperate with the GMs and help keep the secret from other players.”
“I’m curious…” Feng Bujue looked contemplative. “If the Anomaly manages to escape death in the scenario, what will happen?”
The duo’s expressions shifted when they heard that.
“You’ve admitted that one GM might not deal with an Anomaly, so this means that something similar has happened before, right? The situation where a GM was tasked to chase after the Anomaly but was killed instead.”
“Then,” Hwa Xiong said, “the scenario will be closed down like normal and turned back into data. The surviving Anomaly’s code will become stronger and more cunning…”
“Cunning?” Feng Bujue asked for clarification.
“Anomalies are a form of sentient AI, and they are separated into four levels. Normally, we GMs are tasked with handling the weakest, level four Anomalies. Their intelligence is slighter higher than a scenario’s final boss, and they are also slightly stronger than the final boss.
“If there is a situation where the Anomaly survives after the scenario is over, then the Anomaly will, like I said earlier, become stronger and more cunning. It might level up to level three. Ninety-seven percent of the time, a single GM is enough to beat a level four Anomaly while two GMs are needed to deal with a level three Anomaly. The success rate in the same situation for a single GM will be lower than fifty percent.”
“Then what about Anomalies who are of a higher level?” Feng Bujue asked.
“We haven’t come across one before,” Hwa Xiong answered. “Honestly, we haven’t even heard about it. A level two Anomaly only exists theoretically, and the highest level Anomaly we’ve met is level three, which has only happened once before. After going into closed beta, the chance of a level three Anomaly appearing has risen slightly. Of course, even if the chance has increased tenfold, in terms of ratio, the possibility is still exceedingly low.”
“Hmm… I think I get now. So, let’s go and see exactly how strong this level four trash code is,” Feng Bujue said with a smile.