By the time I finally finished writing the last damned line, my hand felt like it had been wrung through a medieval torture device.

"I will not put Hailie in danger."

The hundredth one sat there at the bottom of the page, smug as hell. I wanted to crumple it up, throw it at Eirlys' perfect forehead, and scream there, happy now? But of course, I didn't, I'm stupid but not a moron.

The papers lay stacked on my desk, my cramped handwriting making it look like the ravings of some lunatic punished in detention.

Only then did I even remember the plate sitting off to the side. The lunch someone… Uh, I didn't even know who, probably a maid with no name and no interest in me, had dropped off hours ago.

The steam was long gone. The soup had turned into this weird half-jelly state, the rice clumped together like it had been sitting inside a refrigerator.

But whatever, my stomach growled as my eyes sent visual cues towards the food, and cold food was still food. I shoved the rice down, chewing too fast, burping halfway through. Elegant, I know. I'm sure these snobs would've scolded me for that too. But eating in your own room is much, much, much more comforting.

Eh, who am I kidding? It wasn't like I could enjoy it anyway, the whole room still carried the ghost of Anshur's tears from earlier. I kept seeing her red hair, her freckles, her ridiculous act of bowing and weeping as if I had committed some unholy crime. All I'd done was slam my head into hers when waking up. No, but seriously though, I was apparently the villain in this grand drama.

And now she wasn't even my maid anymore. Eirlys had reassigned her somewhere else, probably as punishment, or protection.

Whatever. Fine. I didn't need a ginger choke-artist hanging around me anyway.

I pushed the plate away after scraping up the last of the rice. My stomach was heavy, my body was tired again, but my mind itched with something else.

"Alright, let's get back to work, it's been a while since I write up a report."

I asked Ann to build an actual teleporter before, but that was something that I could not, ever, I could absolutely NOT tell anyone about, it's an exploit only between us three… And one of us is dead, so it's me and her.

I opened up my PC and started writing an email for Eirlys Sonder, regarding the whole situation about The Titan of Ashen Bark… I only remember to write when it's my ass on the line, which reminds me, honestly, the a story about how fact that different parts of NASA often hide researches like they're a 3-letter agency just to outdone each other when the annual or monthly briefing came.

My fingers hovered above the keys. Then I started typing.

—

Hey,

I'm here to report another exploit, use it as you wish, I found it from joining the Phase 1 of this morning's raid boss, Titan of Ashen Bark, which was a normal dungeon boss with the unique perk of having 1 animation when casting skills but 6 different strong abilities.

You know how the thing "randomizes" its moves? Everyone thinks it's a dice roll between six abilities. But nothing in computers is random. It's all just smoke and mirrors, ones and zeroes, on and off, everything is explanable, really.

Let's cut to the chase, uh…

Darkmoon Adventure VR isn't rolling dice at all, it's reading the system clock. Specifically, the second-hand. Every second, it checks the clock and correspondantly grabs a number from 0 to 9.

That number decides the next move in the "random" rotation.

It's not that simple, honestly, and quite a work to exploit, like, one would imagine that at 19:05:01, the second hand is 01, which means it will get the first number, 0, right? But nope, after testing, it turns out it'll grab 6. And what about 19:05:02? It will grab 1.

But, after too much trials and errors, it'll get predictable, the point is, the same second always leads to the same move. Which means it can be predicted.

The PC version used a different format, so the VR players probably didn't figure it out yet. But if I can figure it out due to spending time in the Early Access, so can anyone else.

Give the community a few weeks, maybe less, and you're going to have spreadsheets timing mob spawns, loot drops, even PvP crit chances.

So yeah, maybe use atmospheric noise or maybe a lava lamp, heard that works, a few hundred of them together and it's oughta be random enough, not perfect, but 99% the way there.

—

I stopped, exhaled, leaned back in my chair. My reflection stared at me from the black corner of the screen, eyebags heavy, hair a mess, eyes halfway gone.

I typed one more line.

Sorry.

I stared at it a long while. My finger hovered over the "Send" button.

Click.

There we go, that'll be patched soon, and good luck to everyone else on the second phase.

What time is it, anyways?

13:05.

The first phase ended around 8:22, if I remembered correctly. Which means 5 hours had passed and in one hour, phase two will begin.

I closed the laptop and slid down onto the floor, curling against the side of the bed.

My belly groaned from too much cold rice. My hand cramped from writing detention lines. My mind hummed with the knowledge I'd just dropped in Eirlys' lap like a grenade.

Tomorrow, or maybe tonight even, I'd have to see her again eventually. Maybe she'd be indifferent, because, it's my job, after all, may she'll thank me, maybe she'd hate me more… Maybe both.

For now, though, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, and burped again.

…

Life's too meaningless.

I want to have sex… Maybe some wild stuff this time… Fucking hell man…

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