Construction Clubs

What happened inside the Coordination Bureau and the Longsword Guild was hardly an isolated case.

Every major guild, along with all sorts of clubs, ran into the same problem.

The Resident Evil instance was simply too troublesome... They had no way to put together a detailed guide.

The terrifying atmosphere, the immense psychological pressure, the unavoidable injuries in combat, the complicated puzzles, the bosses built around special mechanics...

All those factors, combined with the memory-blurring mechanic, made a high clear rate nearly impossible. Even the Coordination Bureau was at its wits' end, let alone the others.

Some system instances had their own distinct rules, but an instance like Resident Evil—one that felt like an entirely new game, complete with its own system—was truly rare.

Ordinary players weren't having much luck clearing it, either.

Everyone coveted the rewards from Resident Evil. A few lucky players—or rather, talented and determined ones—had cleared it, but most regretted entering almost as soon as they went in.

After all, everyone had a different tolerance for horror and a different ability to handle pressure.

The forum was still a sea of misery.

Only now, a week later, the posts had shifted from cursing the instance and denouncing Lu Xiu to begging for guides.

"Lu Xiu, Lu Xiu, I don't know what you look like, but I like you! So could you give me a guide? Or at least tell me more about the instance you built?"

"As if a guide would let you clear it. That instance is so nightmarish you might not even reach the ending with one."

"The problem is, without a guide, I can't even see a way to reach the ending..."

"True... You'd understand if you tried it."

"Someone else just cleared it... Sounds like they joined the Whistling Arrow Guild right away. Talk about making it big overnight."

"Those major guilds must be losing their minds. Who wouldn't want rewards that good?"

"I'm jealous."

"I wonder which guild this Architect will end up joining."

"..."

The clamor of the forum was abruptly cut off.

The scene shifted.

Online, inside a private Construction Space.

Wooden beams crossed overhead to form an arch. The air smelled of old timber and machine oil. Huge gears turned slowly above, occasionally letting out a dull scrape. Following their orderly motion, one could just make out a corner of the clock face outside.

This appeared to be an attic inside a Bell Tower.

At that moment, the setting sun poured through stained-glass windows, breaking into patches of colored light across the long, narrow wooden table at the center of the attic.

Six high-backed chairs.

Six figures whose faces had been deliberately blurred.

A screen of light hovered above the center of the table, displaying the forum discussion as it scrolled past.

The second hand ticked steadily in the background, never stopping.

"I'm curious. Could this Architect really belong to one of our clubs? If so, don't keep her to yourself. Share the good fortune."

One of the six spoke with a laugh. "The Coordination Bureau is looking for her, the guilds are looking for her, the players are looking for her. Everyone is looking for her."

"Moron."

A figure who appeared to be a woman spoke coldly. "If we had someone like that among us, players wouldn't call us those shitty Construction Clubs every day, and I wouldn't have to sit here playing at mystery with you morons. Can you say something useful?"

She glanced around.

"And what is this dump?"

The first speaker stiffened. Apparently unable to take his fellow club leader's bluntness, he glared at her.

She clearly didn't care.

"Moron," she added for good measure.

That was right.

These were the leaders of the Construction Clubs—the rats in the gutter Yan Fushou had spoken of, whose reputations among ordinary people were rotten to the core.

They were among the first to try building instances and among the first to establish Construction Clubs.

When the world had first turned into a game, everyone had focused on playing as a player.

They, however, had chosen to build instances.

Players could curse them in every way imaginable, and the authorities could keep them under close watch, but neither changed one fact: in the two-year gap before the Coordination Bureau was established, they had already made a fortune.

Aside from the Coordination Bureau, they likely controlled more Survival Points than anyone else in the country.

After all, who could have guessed back then that civilian-made instances could contain so many ways to fleece people?

And when the world had just turned into a game, attitudes had been extreme. Most people, armed with tens of thousands of Survival Points, were willing to try anything.

That had allowed the Construction Clubs to expand rapidly.

They had become Architects and founded Construction Clubs. At first, perhaps they really had wanted to make interesting instances. But once they discovered they could earn hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Survival Points by throwing something together instead of toiling over a proper instance, their thinking changed completely.

They began recruiting, concealing themselves, and sinking deeper into the business of ripping people off.

And then there were the unique rewards available to Architects...

In the end, they became the shitty Construction Clubs everyone talked about.

Yet they still made money hand over fist. To Architects, they remained a dream destination.

That was right.

Before the Coordination Bureau was established and before it launched the Builder Special Fund, they had been where every Architect dreamed of going. Back then, if an Architect joined a Construction Club and made even a passable instance, the club would help advertise it—with an ad on the system homepage, no less.

And the Architect got half the ticket revenue!

Half!

Those terms were practically free money. Who wouldn't want to join?

Making money meant going along with the crowd.

There was no shame in that.

This, in turn, made the clubs grow even larger. They had snapped up almost every talented Architect in the country, even though the civilian-made instances they offered the public were still money-grabbing trash.

Within their ranks, however, quite a few Architects could already make respectable A-rank imitation instances.

It was fair to say they understood the Architect profession better than anyone.

After all, they had all but monopolized civilian-made instances for the first two years. No matter how awful an instance was, someone would play it.

And they had always believed one of their clubs would be the first to produce an S-rank civilian-made instance.

Then... Resident Evil appeared out of nowhere.

Fuck! And it was an original instance!

The impact it had on them was enormous.

Not because of their reputations, or because it threatened their profits.

It was because... they had lost their claim to a monopoly on the future.

"Enough."

The person at the head of the long table tapped it lightly, cutting off the argument. "We all know the Architect named Lu Xiu can't be one of ours, and that isn't what we're here to discuss. The public may call our instances trash, but the monopoly we held for those first two years and the sheer number of players have pushed my Architect level all the way to fifteen. You've seen the new functions that unlocked. You should know what an original instance means—and what it would mean for an Architect capable of making one to reach level fifteen.

"Even setting that aside, the profits from Resident Evil alone are enough to tempt anyone. Don't you want an Architect like her to join us? Do you want to hide in the shadows forever?"

"..."

At those words, the other five fell silent.

After a moment, someone said, "There's also the reward for building the first S-rank instance. She should have received it by now... And there are still SS and SSS ranks. An Architect like her might be able to make even higher-ranked instances and claim those rewards too."

"Exactly."

The person at the head of the table nodded. "Which is why an Architect like her can't fall into the Coordination Bureau's hands, and we can't let a guild snatch her up..."

The woman who had been hurling insults spoke coldly. "You don't need to tell us that shit! The question is how we find her. You were the one who told me to take down my bounty on the forum, saying we shouldn't provoke the Coordination Bureau and that things weren't like they were two years ago. What's the point of saying all this now?"

"There is a point. Your approach really would have accomplished nothing except provoking the Coordination Bureau. I have another idea. That's why I called you here."

The person at the head of the table leaned forward. "Have you considered this? Lu Xiu had no previous work as an Architect. Before she built this instance, could she have played any civilian-made instances in addition to system instances? Could she have considered joining a Construction Club?"

The woman paused. "You mean..."

"Even a genius can't develop her skills overnight. Before she became an Architect, she must have been a player. And before she made an original S-rank instance, she must have experienced other instances. We can't check the system instances."

"But we can check the civilian-made instances our Architects built."

"Someone who wanted to become an Architect would surely have tried at least one civilian-made instance. No matter how bad their reputation was, even if she only went in to criticize one, she would have given it a try."

"She might have come out and called it trash."

"But she must have entered a civilian-made instance. For all we know... one of ours might even have fleeced her."

"And if she entered one even once, she would have left a trace in the backend records: her numerical ID."

"We can't pinpoint her exact location, but after the Coordination Bureau was established... our instance ads were targeted by region."