“Has the Ray Dragon event been received well so far?” Lee Hyunwoo, the Chairman of Wind Virtual Games asked from his seat at the end of the long rectangular table.

  The meeting was held directly in Seoul, Korea, and each executive of his developers was present face-to-face. The lights were dim to let the projector better display colors. And generally, Hyunwoo thought the dim lights added to the atmosphere. Wind Virtual was a game development company, after all.

  “Players have called it cheap,” Song Ji-soo, the head of the surveillance team said. She was in her early thirties—young for her position, but she had a sharp mind and clear passion for Wonderwind. “As was expected, the event has been called a simple expansion with nothing special.”

  The surveillance team was essentially a team of official game moderators. Not to moderate text chats like traditional moderators—that job had long been passed to AI—but the surveillance team watched that the players and quests themselves progressed as intended.

  Wonderwind was much more dynamic than most MMO games. The game had tens of thousands of unique items, which only one player could equip, and many of the game’s quests could only be completed once by a single group, never to be seen again. Developing such quests was expensive, but with the help of AI, it was possible.

  With quests like those, it was important to ensure that players completed the quests in the intended timeline. One guild or player could not be allowed to dominate every quest of an event, lest the event would become boring for everyone else. The surveillance team existed for that very reason—to ensure important questlines weren’t broken.

  “We designed the start of the event to be calm,” Hyunwoo reiterated. “There will always be complaints at the start of each event. Our most important job right now is to ensure that the main questline progresses smoothly. What is your report?”

  “Everything has progressed well with only one caveat,” Ji-soo said. “Nine out of ten dragon eggs have been discovered, and they’re distributed well to the expected top guilds. Celestial Order, rank three, has obtained two. Luxueux, rank eight, has one, Syntrix, rank two has one, and the Eon Covenant, rank four, has two as well. And of course, Zenith Protocol, rank one, has obtained two.”

  Hyunwoo nodded. That was five influential and popular top guilds. It was always good for the popular players to obtain important quest items. With every event, lower level players were cheering for their favourite guilds and players, witnessing the Ray Dragon event through livestreams and clips without having to level a character all the way to two hundred just to have a chance to enter.

  That was the reason why Wonderwind could create content that was only experienced by the very elite. Low level players could watch their favourite players perform legendary quests that they themselves dreamed of reaching—and those very dreams made the game so appealing, by design.

  “Other top guilds are progressing as expected as well,” Ji-soo continued. “NomNom Catones has started the Rebel Leader Somdin Questline. Mythforged got defeated and held back, and Warmaxx is slowed, but they should recover. Hopefully…”

  “I presume this must lead to the caveat,” Hyunwoo said.

  “Yes…” Ji-soo said with a troubled look on her face. “There have been two outliers.”

  Hyunwoo raised an eyebrow. “Two underdog guilds? That’s not a problem.”

  “No, I wouldn’t report something that simple,” Ji-soo said. “It’s two low-level players from guild Solo Mage, Veyra and Assassin. They’ve got an egg, they just started the Great Mage Heywin questline, and they’ve already collected a frostfang feather. They’re ahead of everyone by at least a week.”

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  Hyunwoo paused, taken aback. “Guild Solo Mage? I’ve never heard of them. How can they be so far ahead?”

  “They’re slowly garnering a cult following on the forums,” Ji-soo said, “after two viral guild wipes.”

  “Wait,” Park Sungmin, the head of graphics design, said. “That Assassin? The same guy who ran around the Endlich event like a maniac, figuring out the whole map, before camping in the mid-tier dungeons hoping to assassinate anyone that tried to do quests?”

  “I’ve heard of Veyra as well,” Song Joon, the head of monster design, said. “She’s the time mage who cleared a level 290 dungeon in the Endlich event all alone. She didn’t even have a quest active. She just cleared it solo. And most of that was by cheesing monsters.”

  “She used to be a top player, at least,” Ji-soo said. “It makes sense she’s good. She’s finally reaching the leaderboards again with her new account.”

  “And these two players are attempting to clear the Portal Mage’s Crypt?” Hyunwoo asked.

  “They’re inside right now,” Ji-soo said. “They cleared the first Lost Traveler Of Time, and last I checked, they were stubbornly attempting to clear deeper.”

  “And their levels are?” Hyunwoo asked.

  “Both are below two hundred fifty,” Ji-soo said.

  “Then it should be no problem,” Hyunwoo said. “That dungeon is insane. It would be a challenge for Zenith Protocol at their current level. Two underleveled players will get stuck when they first encounter a Sword Of Time. If they get hit once, they die.”

  “See, that’s kind of the problem…” Ji-soo said with a troubled look. “They don’t get hit.”

  She pulled up her tablet, and connected it to the projector. From there, she showed a live feed from the Portal Mage’s Crypt, as if looking at a CCTV camera. The camera showed Veyra and Assassin currently fighting a Sword Of Time.

  The gameplay that Hyunwoo saw should not have been possible. He rubbed his eyes and blinked. He could barely see the assassin’s movements. And Veyra—her casting didn’t make sense. How did her spells come out so fast?

  “They’re dodging or blocking every single attack,” Ji-soo said.

  “Nobody’s Dodge should be that powerful,” Hyunwoo said as he watched the gameplay on the screen. Every one of the Sword Of Time’s attacks was being dodged, or blocked. “And how is he blocking those attacks?

  “He’s not using the system Dodge,” Ji-soo said. “He’s actually moving on his own. The blocks are possible because of an item. The Immortal. If he lands a perfect block, the math allows him to just barely block the swings.”

  “No way,” Hyunwoo said.

  The assassin did it again. A perfect block, which rebounded the Sword Of Time, staggering it. “But how is he landing so many perfect blocks?”

  Nobody had an answer.

  The swordsmen in the Portal Mage’s Crypt were trained by real life sword masters. Their techniques weren’t anything to scoff at. And on top of that, to ensure that nobody could simply dodge every attack, the swordsmen had been given a 50% speed increase to make the fight extra impossible. Taking hits was inevitable. The monster was designed to trade hits with its opponents.

  “Are they cheaters?” Hyunwoo asked.

  “They are not,” Lee Dong-min, the head of security said. “They are just that good.”

  Hyunwoo continued staring at the screen. The level 370 Sword Of Time was at 15% health.

  Then the remaining health bar was one-shotted as the assassin drove a dagger into its neck. Hyunwoo’s mouth hung open.

  “Well, they just obtained the second frostfang feather,” Ji-soo said. “At this pace, they’ll obtain all eight in under a week. They’re close to cracking the first egg. That event is not supposed to happen in weeks yet.”

  Hyunwoo bit his lip. “Reduce the drop rates! Slow them down. If the first egg gets cracked now, the event will progress too fast. Make them absurdly rare for now.”

  “Yes,” Ji-soo said. “Though, that might be unfair.”

  What I just witnessed was unfair, Hyunwoo thought. Those monsters were designed to be undodgeable!

  “Ji-soo,” Hyunwoo said. “Watch that these two players don’t steal all of the quests for themselves. They’re not livestreamers, meaning that any quests they complete will go to empty eyes. And if they do somehow complete this quest, ensure that their achievements will cause a scandal. Anything to bring them to popularity.”

  Ji-soo lowered her head.

  “Losing one of the ten eggs to unknown players won’t change the event results either way,” Hyunwoo said. “We will survey these two players. No matter how good they are, they can’t break the game.”

  Everyone agreed, and from there, Hyunwoo moved to more important discussions: the month’s sales figures.