CHAPTER TWO: patches and loaves

  Reaching level 14 meant finally maxing out her quickshot skill and now was time for a DPS check.

  Having gone back home after taking a teleportation portal, Sersei was in her bedroom.

  She summoned a training dummy with a pumpkin head. It popped out of thin air right in front of her bed with a satisfying pop.

  Then she shot an arrow and chunks of straw and wood scattered across the air before dematerializing. But she didn't notice that.

  What she noticed were the floating digits.

  TRAINING DUMMY -178

  "Huh ?"

  She pulled up her damage breakdown with a flick of her wrist, the GOD-INTERFACE window materializing with its familiar blue glow.

  The numbers stared back at her again.

  Ugly and underwhelming.

  Quickshot Damage: 178

  By her mental calculation she should have broken the 200 threshold easily. And this couldn't be because of the accidental attribute points allocation.

  Something unpleasant lurched in her stomach as she decided to check the latest patch notes... Surely not she told herself.

  【SYSTEM NOTICE: PATCH 2.4.7】 Balance adjustments have been implemented: ? Quickshot (Ranger): Base damage reduced by 40%, cooldown increased by 2 seconds ? Multiple other class adjustments (See full notes) Thank you for your continued adventures in Eonia! , The GameMaster

  "WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FREAKIN'. HECK?!" Sersei screamed.

  She frantically tapped through her skill tree, heart pounding. She felt sick.

  And then there it was Quickshot, maxed out at level 5 with every skill point she'd earned from levels 8 to 12.

  Quickshot (Level 5/5) Damage: 75% of normal shot (REDUCED FROM 110%) Cooldown: 2 seconds Energy Cost: 15

  "Thirty-five percent?!" Her voice cracked and she collapsed onto her bed, arms wide like a starfish. "The GameMaster might as well have reached down from the heavens and personally STEPPED ON MY FACE!"

  The worst part? No free respec option. Not even a courtesy "sorry-we-demolished-your-build" token.

  Nothing. Nada. Zero.

  She rolled over, burying her face in her pillow to muffle a scream that would've put a banshee to shame.

  Three days of grinding to reach level 13, three days of working around her Intelligence misallocation catastrophe, and now THIS.

  Her GOD-INTERFACE pinged with an incoming message.

  【CHAT: Mom】 Good morning, sweetheart! Did you see the update? Your father says something about bread prices going crazy at the market. Hope it doesn't affect your adventuring!

  Sersei's stomach or whatever remained of it dropped.

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  "Oh no. No no no no, "

  She frantically opened her inventory tab and she could feel her fingers trembling.

  Sourdough Loaf (x100) Value: 0.5 silver (REDUCED FROM 15 silver)

  "AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" she howled, bolting upright on her bed. "ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED SILVER DOWN THE DRAIN!"

  Sersei had spent weeks buying up bread whenever the price dipped below 10 silver. It was supposed to be foolproof, bread was a consumable, everyone needed. They'd usually sell for maximum price on tuesday which was unofficially dungeon day in Eonia. Her spreadsheet had predicted a 50% return rate on her investment if she spent time monitoring the market chat.

  But now? Her entire speculative fortune was... Worthless...

  She paced her room, muttering calculations under her breath. "Quickshot nerf means 35% lower DPS, which means at least 22% longer to clear Whispering Woods dungeons, which COMPLETELY invalidates my experience-per-hour projections until level 20!"

  She felt herself spiraling but before things could get even worse a knock interrupted her train of thoughts.

  "Sersei?" Her father's voice, concerned. "I heard... well, the entire neighborhood heard. Everything okay?"

  Sersei yanked open the door, wild-eyed, her long black hair sticking up at gravity-defying angles.

  "Does THIS look okay?!" She thrust her holographic inventory display into his face, pointing at the bread.

  Her father squinted, adjusting his spectacles. "Ah. The bread bug. Yeah, it's all over the merchant chat. Some level 30 bakers in Port-Veolia discovered if you activated 'Make It Rye' while 'Knead More' was still cooling down, it would duplicate the entire batch. Funny no ?"

  "And so instead of reporting the bug they decided to abuse it to NUKE THE ENTIRE BREAD ECONOMY? DO THEY EVEN CARE ABOUT MAKING MONEY"

  Did these guys even understood that they would kill their own benefits, their own profits ? their logic made no sense which made her even more furious.

  Her father shrugged. "Markets self-correct. You know that."

  "SELF-CORRECT? Dad, I have enough bread to feed two guilds, and it's worth less than, " She flailed her arms wildly. ", than the LITERAL DIRT I farm XP on!"

  He patted her shoulder. His eyes were soft and sympathetic. "Think of it as a valuable lesson, there's no surefire thing except quest rewards."

  Sersei's eye twitched again. "And I suppose you're going to tell me Quickshot being gutted like a Frostpass fish is also a 'valuable lesson'?"

  "Quickshot? Oh, the ranger ability. I wouldn't know about that. You know me. Never adventured a day in my life. Heh." He smiled apologetically. "Breakfast in ten? Your mother made pancakes."

  "Great. More carbs. EXACTLY what I need right now," Sersei grumbled, slamming the door shut.

  She flopped back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling where her Level 70 PvP champion vision board still hung. It felt a million miles away now.

  In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a big deal. Just a delay she tried telling herself.

  "Okay. Breathe. Think. Adapt," she whispered to herself, closing her eyes. "Top-tier players don't cry over nerfs...actually... they absolutely do."

  With a lazy sigh, she opened the GOD-INTERFACE forums, scrolling through the predictable outrage:

  Ans_Griffin: QUICKSHOT NERF WTF GAMEMASTER???

  xXDeathArrowXx: f*ck im retiring, not worth dont wanna die.

  Opticalon: Mathematical analysis of Ranger viability post-patch: We're doomed for solo-play. Full breakdown in comments.

  Sersei clicked on Opticalon's post, scanning the comprehensive breakdown of just how thoroughly the GameMaster had decimated Ranger DPS. The colorful charts and graphs only confirmed what she already suspected.

  【CHAT: Mom】 Honey, are you okay? Come downstairs for pancakes.

  She sighed once more and as she stood up the GOD-INTERFACE pinged once more.

  【SYSTEM NOTICE】 PROXIMITY Event: The GameMaster's Gauntlet Duration: 48 hours Rare rewards include: Scroll of Rejuvenation, Location: Whispering Woods, Central Clearing Recommended Level: 10-15

  Sersei froze and read the notification again.

  A Skill Reset Scroll? Usually only available to the highest-level players through the most brutal raid dungeons and.. random events just like this one.

  She checked the time. If she skipped dinner, she could make it to the Whispering Woods by nightfall.

  "Sorry, Mom," she muttered, shouldering her bow.

  Sersei pulled up her map and put a pin on the Whispering woods. The Quickshot nerf was a disaster. The bread market crash was a catastrophe.

  But at least maybe she could salvage a tiny bit of this disaster.