The Loot is a Lie

The Raid was mess.

It was a mess not because the players sucked. It was a mess because the Raid was hellish, punishing, and unforgiving. Half of the guild bought the farm within the first twenty minutes and two-thirds of the remaining half were eliminated over a stretch of six hours.

Elysium’s Raids were famously difficult but never merciless. They in fact reward persistence with abundant loot drops and secret bonuses. These always make the torturous journey in the instances worth it. The devs were generous that way.

But not this time. This new Raid, dubbed ‘The Sovereign Triumphant Challenge’ added during the server update made the heroic Raids feel like a regular power grind. “Not even close,” as some would say after taking on the Raid and failing to proceed beyond the first area.

The shocking casualty rate in the opening moments of this new instance were sure to have had made headlines in most major gaming news portal by now.

As the players who entered the Raid would discover to their dismay, the instance was massive in scale, complete with a harsh environment (toxic and full of booby-traps), insanely resilient mobs (all elites), and almost unkillable mini bosses (with regenerative layer cake health bars). In other words, the Raid sucked big time.

For a Fully Immersive Massively Multiplayer Online Game (FIMMOG) that features hyper-realistic experience of a virtual game world, Elysium was certainly the most successful and yet the most unforgiving in terms of gameplay and features. Yet, it managed to attract unprecedented number of players in the history of MMOGs. This is partly due to the near endless content being added every season. Even after a decade, there are still new missions to complete, new bounties to hunt down, and new instances to explore and loot.

But this latest update had shocked everyone not because of the content (more content is always good) but because of the difficulty. The Raid promised ‘a world to rule’ for those who managed to ‘slay the Guardian to Greatness’ and nothing else. What is the reward actually? No one knows because it was never announced pre-update. Players were expected to discover for themselves the secrets of the Raid by entering it. So far, none had made it beyond the first ten areas. How many areas are there that made up this Raid? Also, unknown.

Four more hours later, almost everyone had been killed and were surely awaiting their respawn timer to wind down so that they could rejoin the Raid at the start of the instance. Oh yeah, there was no mid-point respawn point in this Raid.

That’s when the players realize this Raid hates them. Or the devs hate them, as another player would claim as she got eliminated by one of the elite grunts.

Carpe, the Spankerz guild’s top player and a legend in Elysium for min-maxing his stats and for hoarding the largest collection of epic and legendary loot, cared not for what others thought of the Raid as he deftly leaped over the ruined wreckage of the man-crusher mecha that was the final guardian before the final area.

He reloaded the legendary grade portable missile launcher in his hands as the final barrier deep within the Void Fortress was lowering. Once done, he looked around to see if anyone else made it.

None. All are now waiting to respawn, no doubt. None of those respawned guildmates even managed to rejoin him.

Probably because the mobs respawned. Carpe thought.

“It’s all you now, Carpe!” His guildmates cheered via voice chat. Carpe just said, “I got this,” and steadied himself for whatever final boss this Raid has to offer. Given what he had went through the last eight hours, this final boss fight is going to suck big time.

Once the barrier is down, he could see a brightly lit room with a single metal-looking crate floating in mid-air, surrounded by a shimmering force field.

The jackpot.

Standing below it, however, was an individual, fully armored and holding a huge rifle-looking weapon. Most likely an accelerator cannon. At Carpe’s approach the individual held out one hand, palm forward and spoke. “You don’t want to do this. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“Yes, I do,” Carpe said as he rushed his final target.

“No! You don’t!” The final boss replied and quickly brought the cannon to bear but did not fire. “Stop! Log out and never come back!”

Carpe was mildly curious at the final boss’ behavior, but quickly ignored it as he opened fire once a target lock was achieved. A missile leaped out of the tube, and he quickly reloaded while the warhead tracked the final boss who leaped to the side to evade.

The missile missed, as expected, because Carpe was barely within the minimum firing range and his target was one quick bastard. All Carpe wanted to do was to keep his target off-balance by forcing it to move constantly while inflicting splash damage using the missile launcher at the same time. A dull tone sounded, indicating the launcher had target lock, and Carpe fired again. This time the missile was a near miss as it struck at the wall next to the target’s head.

The final boss, tagged as ‘Discordant_Dancer’ on his HUD, staggered slightly before regaining his footing and dashed to the far end of the room before tossing a grenade that exploded to generate a barrier between it and Carpe.

The launcher’s indicator showed zero rounds left and Carpe took this opportunity to swap it out with a legendary grade assault rifle. He made sure the magazine was loaded with incendiary rounds before double-jumping over the barrier to hunt Discordant_Dancer down.

Carpe found his target hunkering down with a minigun, its barrel already spinning, aimed at him, and quickly fired off continuous three-round bursts. Discordant_Dancer shrugged off the shots and let loose with the minigun, spraying at Carpe with a hailstorm of bullets. Carpe double-jumped again, barely evading the line of fire but continuing to return fire at his target.

Discordant_Dancer’s armor, including its helmet was punctured in several places with rents, dents, and cracks all over. Even so, it tried to track its fire towards Carpe who air dashed several times to throw its aim off. Carpe’s armor finally ran out of booster juice, and he began to drop to the ground. Discordant_Dancer’s minigun suddenly made several rapid dry clicks, indicating it had run out of ammo. But that’s good enough for Carpe who had dropped almost next to it.

Quickly swapping the assault rifle for a vibro-blade (legendary grade, naturally), Carpe lunged at Discordant_Dancer, hoping to kill it before it could reload. But the target merely tossed a grenade at Carpe who tried to side-step the weapon when it exploded. Carpe next found himself dropping like a rock to the ground, unable to move.

“Dammit!” Carpe howled in frustration, realizing Discordant_Dancer was only baiting him to come near before dropping the stasis grenade. He cursed his own noob mistake and watched warily as Discordant_Dancer stood next to his immobilized body.

“I’m sorry. But you don’t understand. This is all a mistake. We shouldn’t have done this. Now you must log out before it is too late,” Discordant_Dancer said as he swapped the minigun for the accelerator cannon which it then rested on Carpe’s helmeted head. “Why aren’t you logging out now?”

For a moment there, Carpe thought Discondant_Dancer’s voice was…sad? This is truly odd for NPCs had never expressed emotions beyond its base expression set within programmed parameters. Even then, those were superficial, meant to merely convey context and flavor. For a brief moment, Carpe thought maybe Discordant_Dancer is another player before quickly dismissing that idea as absurd since its tag had five golden stars next to it, indicating it as nothing but a unique ultra elite boss.

Ultra elite boss equals ultra rare drops.

That thought instantly motivated Carpe to quickly open his inventory but paused when he heard, “Not going to? I guess you wouldn’t after what you went through.”

What the hell was that?

Discordant_ Dancer sighed then said as it tightened its grip around the accelerator cannon, “My last shot. Hope you appreciate it.”

Carpe found what he was looking for: the Golden Cicada (also known as the ‘Get Out of Jail Card’ of the ‘Hail Mary’). It was an item that allows full removal of negative statuses instantly and grants the user temporary immunity from any new negative statuses for thirty seconds. Stackable.

Originally meant to enable players to escape from boss fights, the item had since become a highly coveted item after some industrious players learned they could exploit it by stacking the items en masse. Predictably, griefing ensues. Until the devs prevented it from being crafted or purchased in the future, that is. The remaining Golden Cicadas were not removed and allowed to exist until used, as per Elysium’s game rules.

He had two left and paused half a second before activating one. Almost instantly, the stasis effect ceased, and Carpe quickly rolled away before getting on one knee and switching to his legendary grade hand cannon. He unloaded an entire clip at Discordant_Dancer at near point-blank range who could not avoid the attack in time.

As Carpe reloaded, Discordant_Dancer crumbled to the ground in a heap. With his hand cannon sights firmly on his defeated target’s head, Carpe carefully approached as his HUD cheerfully congratulating him for vanquishing the final boss to the Raid with victory jingles and colorful texts scrolling in his chat window. The Spankerz were whooping and cheering and shouting in voice chat over his hard-earned victory. They were now legends according to one who proceeded to howl like a wolf.

But Carpe was not in a celebratory mood. The final boss fight was too easy and the ease by which he defeated the final boss made him felt uneasy. A private message from Discordant_Dancer suddenly appeared in his chat window: “Please don’t open the crate. Log out now before it’s too late.” Then the message disappeared. Carpe blinked and searched the chat log. He couldn’t find it.

What is this weird shit?

Before he could contemplate further, Carpe’s guildmates were calling for him to grab the loot quickly. Everyone was eager to know what the loot was since they, or rather Carpe, had achieved a server first by finishing the Raid. One-time big rewards were surely awaiting the guild for this achievement.

As Carpe approached, the crate gently floated down until it landed right in front of him. Then the force field disappeared, and he could see a square hand scan panel on top of the crate. Carpe placed his hand on it, and the crate let out a series of mechanical clinks before gradually unfurling like a paper six-sided die. In the middle of the unfurled crate was a squat, silver-colored, polygonal canister with three green lights on top.

The lights turned to red one after the other and a terribly blinding white light engulfed Carpe’s consciousness.