There Must Be Something Wrong With This Game!

Getting into the same car at the sanatorium entrance, Duan Fei and Jinghong first went to Duan Fei’s home, where they said their goodbyes and parted ways.

Jinghong had to go back and make arrangements according to Madam Ye’s instructions, while Duan Fei needed to get home and continue browsing the forums.

Back home, Duan Fei turned on his computer and resumed browsing the forums, looking over the update notes and Summoner details he hadn’t finished reading earlier.

It seemed like just a minor version update, from 0.07 to 0.08, but the amount of new content was incredible.

First was the introduction of the long-term instance mode.

Long-term instances were dungeons that lasted for more than two days. This type of instance usually required a significant amount of time to explore, but the rewards were also much greater.

To accommodate the long-term instance mode, a deep sleep mode was also enabled.

From 12 AM to 8 AM every day was designated as deep sleep time for players. During this period, every hour in reality was equivalent to one day in Abyss. This allowed players to undertake instances lasting up to eight days in-game, greatly expanding the available types of dungeons.

Next came the optimization and complete rework of the card system.

Previously, the difficulty of acquiring cards was too high, with many requiring the completion of nearly impossible quests.

After the update, however, the difficulty of obtaining cards was drastically lowered. Cards now also incorporated the concept of item quality, with everything from Ruined to Mythic available.

Of course, the announcement also mentioned that cards were still quite rare, and players were encouraged to "experience it for themselves."

And finally, there was the content about the Summoner.

Regarding this topic, the announcement had only one sentence.

"Find out for yourselves."

If the update announcement hadn’t disabled replies, Duan Fei was certain that a mob of players would have flamed the development team’s families into oblivion, flamed them until the game servers crashed, and flamed them until the developers were weeping and begging for mercy—not that they’d get any sympathy from the players, even if they took their own lives.

’What did you change? Don’t you have any goddamn clue yourselves?!’

Duan Fei cursed the development team out in his head, then searched for "Summoner" on the forums and began browsing the relevant content.

After reading a dozen or so posts, Duan Fei found that the reputation of the Summoner Profession on the forums was actually pretty good.

"The Summoner is awesome! You go into a dungeon, and you don’t have to do a thing. Just summon and you’re set."

"Exactly. You only need to put points into Spirit, and it works for everything, from supernatural dungeons to any other kind."

"Yep, and summons are super adaptable. You can summon anything from organic to inorganic matter, from Hell to heaven. As long as you’re brave enough, anything can be your waifu."

"Go Summoner. You definitely won’t regret it."

Judging from these comments alone, the Summoner seemed to be a powerful, overpowered Profession, a stark contrast to the "Summoners are too weak" mentioned in the update announcement.

After thinking for a moment, Duan Fei posted anonymously: "I’ve been playing a Summoner, and I feel like every other Profession is trash. Anyone else feel this way?"

In less than ten minutes, a flood of victims appeared.

"Bullshit! I thought that by becoming a Summoner, I’d be able to summon cute Succubus ladies. Why didn’t anyone tell me the summoning is random, and that Succubi can be dudes?!"

"RE: Are they cute?"

"RE: That’s the terrifying part. They’re super cute! Cuter than the female ones! I’ve developed a Constitution where I can’t even play the game without male Succubi anymore!"

"The Summoner can summon so many different things. I was planning to go with material summoning and become a Master of Machinery. But... why can I only summon toilets?!"

"RE: At least you can smash people with a toilet. I summon used toilet paper every single time!"

"RE: Well, at least you can use it to gross people out."

"RE: ...Point taken!"

"This whole Random Summoning thing is such a trap. If you’re lucky, sure, you’re an unstoppable god-killer. But the odds are worse than winning the lottery! I honestly don’t know if the people hyping up Summoners are just stupid or malicious!"

After reading these posts, Duan Fei felt like he was reading a history written in the blood and tears of Summoner players. Behind every Summoner was a minefield of pitfalls, and each person’s minefield was unique.

Even if a new player studied up on all the known pitfalls, they were still guaranteed to run into new ones.

’Still, the Divination Master said I was suited to be a Summoner. Was it because they saw some other skill in me?’

Reading on, Duan Fei discovered that because the Summoner class was so full of pitfalls, most players couldn’t take it and ended up deleting their characters to start over.

Incidentally, deleting a character in this game was a huge hassle. There was a seven-day "cooling-off" period. The only exception was for Summoners, whose deletion requests were approved within half an hour, which just went to show how much of a dumpster fire the Profession was.

There weren’t many active Summoners on the forums; he couldn’t even find any pay-to-read guides.

Thanks to the "Summoner Buffs" in the update announcement, discussion about the class was heating up again. However, most people didn’t believe any changes could salvage it.

As he leisurely scrolled through the forums, Duan Fei occasionally glanced at the drone swarm outside, noticing that the remaining maintenance time was rapidly decreasing.

Under the night sky, the maintenance countdown for *Abyss*, which was originally scheduled to end at 2 AM, began to drop rapidly.

Before long, the remaining time hit Zero. A massive swarm of drones shifted to form the pattern of a firework display, spelling out a line of text: "Update Complete."

"This is the first time I’ve ever seen a game finish an update ahead of schedule. The beta for this game is insane."

With an appreciative sigh, Duan Fei eagerly put on his helmet and logged into Abyss the first chance he got.

"Connecting to Abyss... The Chaos within the Abyss senses your arrival. It whispers in your ear, complaining about your long absence."

"Current version 0.08, updated to the latest build. In this brand-new version, we’ve prepared a plethora of surprises and thrills. We hope you’ll be able to uncover them all."

"Finally, we noticed some players were preparing to exploit instance rewards right before the update. We will be very lenient with these players and issue only a warning. Yes, you. The one reading this last message. Don’t let it happen again, okay?"

After reading the last line, Duan Fei clicked his tongue.

’I was hoping to exploit a bug for some rewards, but I guess it didn’t work out.’

It was just an attempt, though. It didn’t matter whether it succeeded or failed.

Walking out of the basement and into the city, Duan Fei felt that something had changed.

The environment was sharper, the clouds in the sky more realistic. Many details that had previously been easy to overlook were now rendered, making the game feel much more real.

’The development team for *Abyss* really are a bunch of madmen.’

’With this kind of perfectionist, craftsman-like spirit, you have to wonder why they don’t use their energy for something productive!’

’Wouldn’t it be better to just make a few more sexy NPCs?!’

After venting his frustrations, Duan Fei realized it was already approaching midnight.

Before logging in, he had already set the holographic helmet to deep sleep mode. It would activate at midnight, at which point he could find the entrance to a long-term instance.

Back in the basement, Duan Fei found a distinctive blue fire door. The information displayed on it was even more unusual.

Tiers: Unknown. Players: Unknown. Type: Unknown. Recommended Level: Unknown.

The only known fact was that this was a long-term instance. Everything else was a mystery.

After a moment’s thought, Duan Fei walked through anyway, ready to experience what an eight-day, long-term instance was truly like.

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