Saharan Successor

Vol. 1 - Chapter 36 - Developers holding a Meeting

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As Malakai was doing his quest, somewhere in a medium-sized office building in Seoul where time was 10:15 AM, a woman reading the reports made by the super AI, Morpheus, out of nowhere, received a notification in red mark.

[Quest <S016> got cleared by a player.]

When the woman doing her regular reports saw this alarm from Morpheus on her screen, she instantly reacted by getting her glasses off and double-checking the alert.

"No way. This must be a bug, a level 25 player or lower can't even pass the quests. I need to call Cheolho immediately."

Quickly grabbing her phone, she called out the main developer of the game and the company's CEO, Lim Cheolho, who responded right away, with a puzzled voice.

"Did something happen, Nahee? Don't tell me Morpheus started bugging?"

"That's what I fear happening, Cheolho. Morpheus says one among the beta players cleared the quest S016, the content added by Karl, about the Shadow Master."

"No way. Someone becomes 'Shadow Master Apprentice' while playing the beta? It's only been one month. Wait, I'll make my way right away to the office. Also, prepare a call for every developer."

"All 32?"

"Yes, this one is urgent. Don't worry about them being angry at you. Once they get to the meeting, they will understand.

I hope it isn't a bug and just the hard work of a player. Anyway, we should start planning for the live release of the game while the ball is hot." said Lim Cheolho over the phone, while Yoon Nahee, the head of 'Satisfy' operation team, was taking notes in her notebook.

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Soon, in about 20 minutes, inside a meeting room in the office building of S.A. Group, Lim Cheolho, along with another three Korean Developers, were sitting side by side, facing a big screen with many windows for about 29 people.

"Lim, what's with this sudden meeting? Did Morpheus failed and overclocked burning out?" asked one developer that had a heavy Russian accent.

"Is not that Fyodor? This meeting is about telling you guys that someone cleared out an SS quest and grained a Unique rated class, Shadow Master."

"No wah, someone managed to clear my old man's quest?? There's someone so crazy enough to clear his quests?" inquired a man whose name on the call was Karl.

"Indeed Karl, this is your creation, so you explain to us, at what level was someone supposed to clear this quest?" asked Cheolho, with a calm voice, at one of his core co-workers.

"I don't even need to take out my spreadsheet to tell you about old Bayek crazy personally and conditions. Technically, there are two paths to encounter him and gain his interest.

The first path, you have to be a citizen of Reinhart, Eternal Kingdom. At the first three starting years of the game timespan, his locations would vary depending on his moods. I integrated his personality, but by now, he should have been to 'Jackmaw Tavern'.

So to get on with this path, you have to be a Beginner who wants to become an assassin. These are the main conditions, being a naked beginner without any skills. Getting to the tavern, you have to bribe the innkeeper who has a 5% chance of recommending you old Bayek."

"Cut it short, Karl, it's 3 AM on my time here." said a guy called Yanis over the conference.

"Tsk, jerk. Technically, if the innkeeper recommends old Bayek's and you enter inside his room uninvited, you are dead, simple as that. The condition to be invited is to wait from one hour to about eight hours in front of his door, knocking only once. If one would knock more times, the outcome would be their death. Still, getting to meet him is not like you will be given a chance to take on his hurdles."

"Ahem, there are five hurdles like the 12 labours in the mythic story of Hercules, each harder with every passing. However, the setting would be that every hurdle would be adjusted to the level of the player."

"Wow, Karl, you really are messed up in the head to make such a character." called out Yanis, with a sarcastic voice, before quickly being replied by Karl.

"Ohh, but thank you."

Lim Cheolho tapped his finger on the office table and called Nahee inside along with every data on the one who cleared the quest.

"We will watch the person who cleared the quest and see if it was a bug or not. After that, we will discuss something else related to the future of the company."

As he said that, he had Nahee play out the entire 3 hours of game time, Malakai had to take the hurdles. The video started by showing a young man with blonde hair walking toward the tavern Karl was referring to, a level 4 player, who surprisingly had linen clothes.

"Ohh, the kid doesn't even have a skill yet he had money to buy clothes? What's this. Yoon, can you add more detail?" asked another developer, the woman standing a bit distanced from the four developers on the Korea side.

"I haven't downloaded that part from Morpheus, but this Malakai, or what his real name is, Vlad Ene, a Romanian player. He just started the game today and only cleared one quest that required him to carry the materials of NPC B-891 'Isabel'. In doing so, he earned himself seven gold that he spent on buying new clothes, and with the remaining, keeping for himself."

After some silence, the developers had the video of him getting to the innkeeper and asking for information about assassin trainers. Swiftly enough, they played most of it at fast speed, especially when he had to wait in front of the door.

Only after he got there meeting the old man did they slow down.

Soon Malakai's hurdles entered their eyes and watched with shocked eyes as this young man started using extreme ways to climb down the trees, bleeding himself dry. The piece of resistance was when he jumped off the tree.

"This boy is a kindred spirit of mine. Haha, he actually thought the same as me when I put myself in the position of quest clearer." laughed Karl with a hint of being a bit crazy in the head.

"There is no bug here." commented Lim Cheolho, who watched everything with great attention.

Then the second hurdle came where they watched with attention as Vlad was pummeled down, beaten and tortured, pain wise and mentally wise.

Karl once again began applauding like a madman when he saw Vlad deliver the [Eviscerate] and [Backstab], later saying to the confused developers.

"Those skills require the stat [Killing Intent] being opened, but because of the realistic clause we have introduced to Morpheus, any person who enters a state of mind similar to the Stat concept and description will be able to achieve that."

"No bugs thus far. The kid in question here has to be a genius to figure out all of these, or simply a maniac." commented Lim Cheolho, who played the video forward, where the old man congratulated Vlad, and later their dumbfoundedness came along.

It was about three hours of old Bayek strangling Malakai until the young man would start foaming and drop on the ground and repeat for so many times that some Developers left their seats, doing whatever.

"Man, this kid is really something. I might be crazy, but I for sure can't endure the old man sending me to hell for so many times." commented Karl, seeing everything unfold.

It was until when the sun was about to start rising up that Malakai looked to be in a serene state, releasing black smoke from his body, making the old man laugh like there was no tomorrow.

"That's it, little Malakai. Embrace the shadows."

"Fuck you, old man. When I get to help you get to transcendence, I will return the favor a thousandfold."

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The devs who heard Malakai comment chuckled to themselves, especially when one said.

"Kid, there are so many variables in this game that it is unknown if that old man will live for more than two-three years. No offense Karl, but the way you set the crazy old man, is leaving him slowly dying, losing his potential and powers, heck you even crippled him."

"Say what you want about my creation, but the class is among the hardest to control we have built. It starts at Epic but has the potential of reaching Legendary."

"Fuck, the game balance. Isn't it broken if the kid already got an Epic class this fast? Yoon Nahee, how many people got classes that are above the common rating among the 10.000 beta testers."

Nahee used her tablet to get to some documents, later mentioning in a stoic manner.

"There are 1167 players with rare classes and only 6 players with epic classes."

"Only six? The rate is still high for only one month."

"Lim, I guess you wanted to talk about the game balance and how easy it is for players to get their classes?"

"Indeed, the intent for the beta stage was to test some murky systems, such as the sleeping system, stamina system, the intimate system, and loot system. Everything has been fixed where there were bugs. Now we really got nothing to fix in those areas. As for the other areas, Morpheus is running checks 24/7, and there are no errors for bugs and uncertainties.

All we have to do is increase the rate for the experience so players would level harder after level 25, drop down the probability for players receiving higher-rated classes to a low, since we want a long term game, not something like the other competitors on the market." said the CEO, to his colleagues who built the game with him from the ground up.

"Sounds good. We should agree to these changes now since we signed that we developers will not interfere with the progress of the game when the game turns online for every player." said a developer, Andrade, before the other developers had their say.

They quickly reached a consensus at a vote that passed, with all 33 developers agreeing to the changes proposed by Lim Cheolho.

They discussed when to end the beta version, which was set to happen in three weeks global time at a vote that passed with a majority.

"It is better to have it closed in two weeks. Think. How much advantage do you want the beta players to have over normal players? They are already enjoying themselves too much."

"Don't worry, we will set the shuffle this time. So all the information they might have hoarded to themselves would be useless. The chances of them spawning in the same location is 0.5%" commented Lim Cheolho, who calmed the spirits between his colleagues who had a debate about the ending, even though they already voted.

"Fine, it is good we thought of every possible outcome while using Morpheus."

"We'll also do a clean reset to every player. This implies every item, title, class, reputation owned on their character by the user will be deleted. Affinity with the NPC's will also be cleared and reset."

Finally settling down on every aspect of their plans for the live version and ending their conference, Lim Cheolho told Nahee to prepare for the announcement and increase their promotional campaign worldwide that generated more than 200 million unique IP address users visiting their website.

In no time with the head of operations at work, the game received the general message telling them about the ending of the beta version, which had all beta players stop from what they were booing, scaring the living heck out of NPC's.

The customer service team also was entrusted with the task of sending an email to every beta player announcing to them about the beta ends.

The forums were set ablaze with the posts of beta players who received the emails and who posted the world message. The ones who were the happiest were the ones who didn't receive the beta access but were for sure people to tag in and play the game.

Such a case was for a young asian man from Seoul who was watching the news about Satisfy with excited eyes.

"This is my lucky chance to make money and gain fame. I don't have anything else but this game to try. Still, I need the money to buy the capsule. I'll wait until they tell the live version releases, then I'll buy the capsule on the same day when the prices of the capsule are not too high."

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Different time zones had their own reaction to that news, but the old mother continent, Europe, was shrouded by night, and people were sleeping, except those working night shifts and addicted gamers.

When morning came to Romania, Mathias started his day in his usual style, nothing exaggerated. He didn't even check his emails since it was something he used to do after getting back from work.

Getting to work, everything went ordinary, with the exception of an encounter with a nudist in the hallway that tried to get back to his room that was locked automatically when exiting his room, but that was the exception. Following that, he took his lunch break at 12:30 and getting outside on a bench, soon another person arrived.

This person had blonde hair, features just like Vlad. The only aspect that changed about him were the dark circles under his eyes.

"What happened to you? You haven't adjusted your capsule settings to warn you when it is time to sleep." asked Mathias, eating his sandwich.

"I couldn't. I had to clear a quest and also had a running with an old motherfucker who tried to kill me so many times. But guess what."

"What?"

"I got a class after this quest with that crazy old man."

"Ohh, mind telling me what you got?"

"Shadow Master Apprentice. An epic class that is also a growth one."

"Congrats, you really stepped on some shit yesterday that you got already a class. I myself still don't have a class, but I got unique skills and epic skills."

"I do too, but I can't use them. I don't have enough mana. Only the first shadow skills I can use it, using my new system, Shadow Energy."

Continuing to munch on his sandwich, he let Vlad also eat without asking him too many questions.

"Try to learn everything by heart. I have this feeling in my heart that when that reset comes, we will lose everything, activate skills, and so on. Figuring the technique itself will probably give us a chance to relearn what we lost."

Vlad nodded his head while taking his phone and showing him his email that got opened with the S.A Group mail.

"Here, read it yourself. Aren't you the descendant of Mother Miranda?"

"Bah, your jokes are out of touch. Let me see."

Saying that Mathias began reading the email that stated the circumstances of the beta players and what would happen to them, where he said with a hateful and sad voice.

"Those bastards! They will delete everything I built with my Fay and Jeanne and the rest of the NPC's I interacted with."

"Don't tell me, you got so deep into the realistic aspect of the game that you hooked up with one of the NPC's?" asked Vlad with a surprised voice.

"Is there a problem? Can't I like the women there? There are so many guys simping for their 2D arts, while I can't feel anything about a girl that feels more human than those girls here?"

"Hmmm, you got a point there. Isabel really felt like a genuine real woman. I could feel her emotions. Just like you mentioned, they have their own lives and stories. Especially that fucking old man, who strangled me so much that he probably took pleasure seeming me spasm on the ground."

"Not interested in your relations with old guys."

"You… Jerk, what are you implying? Do you think I enjoyed getting choked? You sick person. I am a women's lover all day, all night."

"Fine, let me stay in silence until the break is over. I have to think what I should do with them."

"I mean, you have anything else to do? Just be patient. If you have a high affinity with them, it means you know them by now. It will be easy approaching them for a second time, winning their hearts."

"It's easy talking from the sidelines. What if I never meet them again? You probably are happy escaping that old man and scamming him of his skills."

"Hehe, I take this reset as a blessing in disguise. Bro, Saharan is my next place. I don't ever want to have an encounter with that sick old man."

"Yes, sure. Let me think." reading as he was eating, Mathias found something skeptical that he later debated with Vlad.

"Vlad, listen here. They say here that the items deleted will be those on the players. Are you finding what I think I have found in this message?"

"I don't know, doesn't it simply imply that all your items will be deleted?" getting his phone back to read the email, he saw Mathias point on the "on your body".

"If I am not overthinking this too much, doesn't this implies that I can make an item and not hold it on me instead of giving it to an NPC?"

"No way, they might have thought of that. Still, you have your chance. You are probably the only weirdo who writes inside the game and also built a high affinity with some babes in that world. Right, do you want to hear a fun fact I read from the forum, from a Saharan beta player?"

"I am all ears."

"The men of Saharan can have three legal wives. If I ever meet the developer of the Saharan Empire, I will give him a kiss like Brezhnev. A fantasy world for any man, making yourself feel like a king."

"Buzz off, stop being a creep. Also, how do you even know about those old people, is like more than 70 years since they passed?"

"Ahem, it doesn't matter. That Saharan Empire, I started loving that place even more than I expected when finding that. You know, sometimes it is better to escape from the constraints of your societies and those standards set by billionaires and rich people. Wasn't that back in the day, in history, there wasn't so much fuss about this aspect? As long you could maintain your family and keep your wife's happy, there was not much fuss. Now we can't even touch women properly that we get accused of all sort of blatant lies."

"That's why I like them. They are simple women with colorful personalities and unique takes on life."

"Damn, lucky bastard. I'll have to find a cute girl there too, either being her a player or NPC."

Reaching the end of their break, they departed to their separate stations, Vlad being a barman while he was a cleaner.