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Over the next few days, the three collaborators took turns testing the Helgen prologue and took copious amounts of notes on everything they could think of.
"It's as I thought," Francis eventually concluded after finishing one last game of 'Escape the Dragon'. "There's nothing more to work on."
"What do you mean?" Hashimi asked curiously. She'd been the first one to try the scenario and had found it pretty good, but after several viewings, she'd still found some small architectural improvements she could make.
Jin similarly was wondering what Francis meant. The Helgen scenario was now so complete that it could hook people if they tried it, but there were always improvements that could be made.
Francis crossed his arms and tried leaning back on his chair. Unfortunately, considering that they were in Jin's apartment, which now had no normal chairs, only sheet-covered food buckets, he slipped right off.
A small scramble ensued, and blame was assigned before Francis once again sat down to say what he'd wanted to say.
"Helgen isn't perfect," he began. "But it doesn't have to be at the moment. From my understanding, neither of you have worked on a project with no deadline before?"
Hashimi and Jin shared a look before nodding.
"The issue with not having a deadline is that if you leave a project for a week and come back, there will always be something you'll want to change or improve. It's a cycle that can take forever, and more importantly, it's a cycle that devours the time you could have spent on actually finishing the project."
"Ah, I get what you mean," Jin muttered. He'd forgotten some business fundamentals in this world so devoid of even basic market principles. "A good product isn't a perfect product; it's a product that sells."
Francis looked at him with some confusion at the terminology, before eventually shaking his head. "Well, whatever you said sounds about right. What I mean is basically that Helgen is good enough that whatever energy we spend on improving it further could have been better spent on finishing the rest of the scenario, which, may I remind you, is going to take a lot of time."
"You're right," Hashimi acquiesced. "Helgen is one of the smallest towns in the scenario. I have to start getting work done on the others."
"Exactly," Francis said with a nod. "Additionally, as we create more of the world, we'll find more things that we will want to improve about it. It's more efficient to finish the rest and then come back to make all those improvements at once. For example, at the moment we've only developed and included the Spark spell, but what if, when we make the rest of the lightning skill tree, we decide we want to change the visuals to fit some larger theme? Or do we want to change the armour of the empire or the architecture of the houses?"
"I see," Jin remarked. "Better we continue on with the rest of the continent, then. Helgen took us about a month and a half, optimistically, the rest of the scenario is that times a 100…" he trailed off.
"That's 100 to 150 months," Francis said.
"Eight to fourteen years," Jin sighed.
"Good speed, most inner disciples produce one valuable scenario per decade," Francis muttered.
"Yeah, but they're not working together," Jin replied with a sigh, eliciting a shrug from his two co-workers.
"Look," Hashimi started. "The only reason we're already this fast is because you're so creative, you provided the basic outline for the entire thing already, we're just colouring it in. This project might very well take any other group 50 years."
"Also, as we work on it for longer, more and more assets will be reusable," Francis encouraged. "Ten years is a good enough timescale."
Jin looked dubiously at the old man before humming and narrowing his eyes.
"What?" Francis asked with a twitch of his eyebrow.
"Are you sure you have ten years in you?" Jin asked dubiously.
"Shut up," the old man grumbled. "I'm the most spry spring chicken nearing 200 in the sect. I still have half a century before anyone can call me old."
"Also, our work will get interrupted immediately for this tournament that's coming up," Jin said with a sigh.
"Don't worry, Jin, we can keep working on it while we're there?!" Hashimi said reassuringly with a blinding smile and a thumbs up.
"We?" Jin asked in a confused tone of voice.
"I signed up, our scenario inspired me. I have to see more of the world to make better scenarios. Also, I never knew fighting could be so fun!" she exclaimed.
"You've been mostly beating up that female captain you don't like," Jin replied, his eyes spinning. "That's hardly a worthy opponent. We'll be the disadvantaged ones at the tournament."
"That's what the combat classes are for, I'm going to learn how to use a sword!" Hashimi exclaimed.
"Well, if you both go to the tournament, then I'll be staying here working on the in-betweens," Francis remarked.
"I don't know how much time we'll have for work at the tournament." Jin frowned.
"Do what you can." Francis shrugged. "Also, enjoy combat class." He snickered. It was weird seeing an old man with a grey beard snicker. "I got an exemption."
Jin sighed. He would have to help teach the combat classes due to his comparably higher amount of experience. It was an assignment from Elder Flower, which had once again come without an option of refusing it.
He didn't know his assignment yet; all he knew was that he'd assist the Elder responsible for teaching the class with whatever they needed.
His first lesson was set to begin -he withdrew inwardly to check his biological clock, the wonders you could do with minor mental spells- in thirty minutes.
"Well, if you're joining for combat class, we should start going," Jin said with a sigh. He really hoped he was being paid for this; Elder Flower had conveniently forgotten to mention that. From what he'd heard, she would be teaching the core disciples.
"Sure," Hashimi said happily, before laughing. "By the way, you won't believe what I saw today on the way back from lunch!"
"What?" Jin asked. Hashimi was their designated source of gossip, to keep a finger on the pulse of the competition and such.
"Lung Junior was dragging his way out of the library with his fingernails. He was completely emaciated and had a dead look in his eyes. Some other noble kid went up to him and told him that Elder Flower made great achievements in the war. I swear, he literally shrivelled up on the spot. I wouldn't be surprised if he died." She shook her head. "No idea how long he's been in the library, if he's only now heard the news. Also why? All I know is that he's been trying to clear some Illusion Room, but that he's been exiting it every hour while screaming for his mom."
"The heavens sure are mysterious," Jin commented idly. Beyond the minor enjoyment he got from the fact that the boy was suffering, he really didn't care. The whole situation with the zombies was over. It was time to move on.
-/-
The reason why the now mandatory combat classes had started so late in comparison to the date on which Elder Flower had actually returned to the sect with enough authority to enact some changes was because the inner ring hadn't had the infrastructure necessary to accommodate such a large effort before.
After all, they weren't a combat sect, so why would they have a large area set aside for combat training purposes?
Well, now they did. It was quite similar to the fighting platform that Jin remembered seeing from the Mad Monks' outer ring back in the day… In fact, barely a year ago…
Alongside the more uninhabited part of the ring was now a large square structure of tiled stone jutting off the mountain and defiantly towards the heavens.
The platform was currently covered in a sea of beige, each figure holding a wooden practice sword and swinging it down in the motions demonstrated by Elder Fing, a middle-aged-looking uncle with a hanging gut who was supposedly a part of Elder Flower's faction within the sect. He was quite recently promoted from what Jin had heard, and had become an elder on the merit of having contributed to the upcoming multiplayer function of the Illusion Rooms.
He was also a massive weeb.
"Let your flames of youth burn!" the man shouted excitedly, swinging his wooden practice sword down once again.
"Hyah!" the disciples responded unenthusiastically.
"I can't hear yyyyyyooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!"
"Hyyaaaahhh!!!"
Jin sighed as he walked down the line in front of him, idly correcting whatever crooked form he saw.
It had been decided that before anything else, the inner disciples of the sect should first be familiarised with the most common weapon of the cultivation world. More specific materials would soon be provided in the library in the form of instructional Illusion Rooms.
The idea was apparently to build the physique and combat sense with a basic weapon from which the inner disciples could then diversify on their own.
The fact that such a start from scratch was perfectly correlated with how pathetic the display in front of Jin was. Ten or so other inner disciples with more combat experience had been drafted, each one responsible for a horizontal line of about 20 disciples who were all seemingly incapable of even the most basic sword stroke.
Most of them looked like they'd never held a weapon before.
This was a bit ridiculous when one considered that their sect was based on creating combat simulations. The display made Jin doubt that any of the disciples had actually ever gone through one of their scenarios.
Of course, the Illusion Room Sect primarily produced mental cultivators, so their combat strength should theoretically lay in the usage of spells, arrays and talismans, but still, this was pathetic.
"When you commit to a downward slash, your leg is supposed to go a bit forward; you can't exert force like this," Jin told an old inner disciple with a moustache before moving on, not staying to check if the problem was actually fixed.
Even if one's combat style was based on spells, basic physical proficiency was still necessary. After all, physical stamina was another resource that should be used in a battle, and at the end of the day, the most cost-effective way of dodging an attack was stepping aside.
The sword training was supposed to serve as a foundation, while disciples supplemented their combat rating by learning combat techniques and spells from the library. These would then be tested against other disciples in a series of one one-on-one spars after the sword training. There was a complex ranking system involved, and every win and win streak was rewarded by sect contribution points.
Elder Fing had explained everything to him.
Considering that the Illusion Room Sect was essentially trying to create a warrior culture and training system that had previously not existed, Jin wasn't really holding his breath.
This was later confirmed when he stood on the platform under the watchful gaze of the Elder to face his first challenger in his daily designated duel.
A boy with wheat-coloured hair was bragging in front of him with his eyes closed.
"Of course it's foolish to make us mental cultivators rely solely on the sword, this is why this match shall be won by the merit of spells, not brute force. I have long since studied the arcane and can achieve feats your paltry mind likely cannot even imagine. The sect contribution points are mine!" the boy exclaimed proudly before the instructor waved his hand for the match to begin.
Jin, forced to wield a wooden sword rather than his lance, promptly jumped back from their starting position as his adversary raised his hands and started wiggling them in the air and incanting a spell.
"Fires of hell that burn eternal, the ninth river cannot quench you and the heavens weep in joy at the screaming of the damned!" the guy finished with a shout and thrust forward his arm.
Jin was mostly just planning on dodging, knowing that an inner disciple was unlikely to throw out a spell that was too fast or too wide.
He needn't have worried, the thumb-sized fireball that escaped the other disciples palm thrust was probably the fire magic equivalent of a wet fart.
His adversary awkwardly looked on as Jin simply smacked the fire fart out of the air with his sword, but his bravado remained.
"No matter!" he exclaimed. "We are mental cultivators, so our strength obviously lies in being able to play with the mind as if it were putty in our hands! I've recently learned a technique that deaccelerates the flow of perceived time by a magnitude of ten. What will you do when my thoughts are moving ten times as fast as yours?" the boy asked arrogantly, once again waving his hands in the air.
"Calming the mind with a thousand heavenly rivers!" he shouted, before crossing his arms and glaring at Jin. "Face me if you dare," he said.
Jin, for his part, simply sighed, looked at the sky above and asked for guidance.
'Throw the sword,' the heavens said.
Choosing to listen, Jin took his wooden sword, pulled his hand back in a javelin-throwing stance and infused it with qi. A basic strengthening measure.
Then his body whipped forward with a snap, and he threw his weapon.
"Ha, you think such a simp-" the other guy said before promptly being nailed in the forehead by the sword and slumping to the ground unconscious.
It seemed that the Illusion Room Sect's aspirations of having a combat-ready force of disciples were still a few decades away.
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AN: I have been sick for 2 weeks now (double covid. Had it once, got better, got it again), which is why this chapter is a day late. I just can't handle it anymore to be honest and was just coughing the whole day yesterday.
I hope you liked the chapter. As you can probably tell we're going to transition to a tournament arc soon. It's really relatively progressed on patreon so if you want to read ahead or just support me you're welcome.
I'm sort of reinventing this genre, or at least re-imagining it because I always have other stuff interrupt the game-development process and sometimes have run two arcs in parallel, which will be mostly highlighted in the next 20 chapters. I am actually reading a story similar to this one right now, one of those Chinese into Hollywood self-inserts where they take all the good movie ideas from the future. The author there chose to supplement the directing of movies with relatively boring romantic sub-plots which I always skip, so I am trying to do something different, hope it's working, will work.