Draconia Offline vol. 1

4.2. Compatibility Failure - Part 2

All of them shout at the same time. So I was right, it's not only me.

"I used to have 93% but today it was 90%," Fefnir shrieks. "It was such a shock that I even thought of quitting on you, guys."

"My 95% dropped to 92%," Liana says.

"83... now 79," Gotrid gulps. "I thought my helmet is malfunctioning."

"Mine dropped by 13%," I lower my head.

"Shit, that's a lot, Aefener," Fefnir shivers. "Do you feel alright?"

"Well... I know that 87% is considered great when it comes to one's compatibility level but my surroundings feel too unreal to me," I sigh. "My wings listen to me and everything but the air doesn't feel as real as before."

"Send a message to the developers," Gotrid proposes and finally forgets about using honorific and role-playing. "They'll surely listen to one of their best players. I bet they have you in their priority list when it comes to answering questions from customers."

"You're right," I nod and materialise a virtual console in front of me. I send an official customer service request but even for me it usually takes a few hours to get a reply.

"It might be something with the game itself," Liana is thinking out loud. "Let's check the Internet in the real world. If it's not only us, I bet players are already starting to complain about it."

"Oh, Uriel is calling," a notification window pops up in front of me.

"Uriel?" Gotrid tilts his head because he obviously can't know everyone from the royal guild since it's only his second day as our member.

"She leads our magic training team," I explain quickly and put her call through.

"Hi, Aefener," Uriel's bust appears as a hologram in front of me. She has short blue hair and gray wings with a black pattern.

"Hi, Uriel," I greet her. "I guess you noticed as well that something's wrong with the game?"

"We did," she says slowly. "So it dropped by 13% for you? Crap," she swears. "The bug might be worse than we anticipated."

"Huh? How do you know that?" I blink, confused. "Who's we?"

Uriel chews her lip.

"I know because I got your customer request ticket, Aefener," she says slowly. "I'm one of the developers."

"You're kidding!" my jaw drops and I'm not the only one.

"Well, you know," she laughs nervously. "It wouldn't be any fun just watching the game from above. How else could we really know what to improve?"

"Wicked," Fefnir remarks. "Is one of you also in the Dragonkin leading guild?"

"Sure, he's contacting Patriarch Deminas as we speak," she nods. "Don't panic, the compatibility drop is happening to everyone. We're not sure if we messed something in the upcoming update which was implemented a few days ago or if it's the firmware update in helmets that manufacturers are responsible for. We're running all sorts of tests."

"Makes sense why you wanted to lead the magic training team so badly," Liana remarks. "You need willing beta testers, right?"

"There's no misguiding you, Li," Uriel smiles faintly.

"I bet you developers must be going crazy right now," Fefnir says sympathetically.

"The drop in compatibility is one thing," I decide to mention it, "but I've been experiencing strange fatigue and even back pain in real life."

"I feel more tired as well," Liana seconds.

"Oh," Uriel is taken aback. "We have no such reports from other players but we can't overlook anything. Thank you for telling me."

"Do compatibility levels keep dropping as we speak?" Gotrid is curious.

"They do," Uriel sighs. "I have to go now, sorry. You have no idea how much work and complaints we are dealing with right now. We'll post new information on our official site and stay in touch with all race rulers."

"Should we keep playing or take a break?" Liana asks.

"Try to play normally, we need more data," Uriel pleads us. "I just hope we didn't mess it up too badly... well, see you!"

Uriel's call ends and soon she appears offline but I bet she's still plugged into the game trying to fix things, just not with her casual avatar. Wow, I'm friends with an actual developer. How cool.

We discuss things a bit more but because it's nothing we as normal players can solve, we decide to log out for now and try again tomorrow. Play normally as Uriel suggested.

"Just a sec," Fefnir holds us when we reach for the log out button on our virtual consoles. "What's the lowest immersion level needed for Draconia's VR full-dive?"

"Hmm... 45% I guess?" Liana tries to remember but she isn't sure. None of us knows exactly as we never needed it.

"If...," Fefnir continues, "and is a big if just to be safe than sorry.... if the game eventually crashes, we should have some other means how to get in touch in the real world, don't you think?"

"Right, a good point," Liana scratches her chin. "What should we use? Nothing that links to our real names, though."

"Well, I'm on Vortex," I say. "I have my fan page there because you can link it to virtual games you play and stream through it."

"I'm also on Vortex," Gotrid seconds. "It's a safe platform."

"Watching Aefener's feed I bet," Fefnir smirks.

"Let's use that," Liana ignores his bickering. "Our nicknames will be the same to avoid confusion and we can find each other through Aefener's account."

"A great idea and..."

I don't finish the sentence. Out of the blue, my head explodes with a severe migraine. I've never felt a headache during full-dive so it takes me by surprise and I collapse on my knees. I'm not able to keep my wings folded behind my back so feathers are suddenly everywhere on the ground. Not a nice view seeing a proud Celestial like that.

My friends jump to help me but the system notices an abnormality in a user's brain and initialises an automatic safety log out.

WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED

INITIALISING EMERGENCY LOG OUT...