[Chat Log - Session 13]

[All] System: Party member "Ruby" has changed their username to "Gunblades 'N Roses".

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: What is uuuuup, my friend-os!

[All] Zeiss: Oh my god.

[All] Yang: Wha-?! I demand to know how you did that!

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Not telling youuuu!

[All] Zeiss: You found the chat settings menu, didn't you?

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Gack-!

[All] Zeiss: Well, if one of us has already fallen in, I suppose she might as well drag the rest of us down with her.

[All] System: Party leader "Zeiss" has changed their username to "SSJ Mercenary".

[All] Yang: I'm completely lost here. What do I do?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Go to the settings menu, find the chat section, then press "change username."

[All] Yang: Oh, okay.

[All] Yang: Found it!

[All] System: Party member "Yang" has changed their username to "Captain Dragon".

[All] Captain Dragon: SHOW ME YOUR MOVES!

[All] SSJ Mercenary: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: YANG, WHY?!

[All] Captain Dragon: YESZ!

[All] Taiyang: I come out of the shower to this?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Oh my f***ing god.

[All] Qrow: Buddy, if I were you, I'd dig in and get comfortable. This might go on for a while.

[All] Taiyang: Sigh… all right. Might as well go with it, since I'm here for the long run.

[All] System: Party member "Taiyang" has changed their username to "Big Daddy".

[All] Qrow: Well, then. Guess I don't have a choice.

[All] System: Party member "Qrow" has changed their username to "Everyone's Favorite Drunkle".

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Yesssss… succumb to the horrors of the chat room…

[All] Big Daddy: Quit acting like a B-list movie villain. You're horrible at it.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Wow. Rude, much?

[All] Big Daddy: Doesn't make it any less true.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Yeah, honestly, that was kinda terrible. The line was cheesy and just plain bad.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Well, there goes my pride, flying right out the window. Thanks sooooooo much.

[All] Big Daddy: You're welcome.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Anyway, what do the scouters say about your power levels?

[All] Captain Dragon: I just went up to 16.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: I'm about halfway to 13.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Really? I hit 17 a few days ago. Did the experience nerf get to you guys too? No, wait, you're still in school...

[All] Captain Dragon: Hold on, are you trying to tell me that our EXP rates are being screwed with?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: I'm not sure, but I'm getting a lot less than I was when I was still on Patch. I have a theory that it's the work of an unseen admin.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Why would they want to do that?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Probably to stop up from becoming too broken too fast. Think about it: if we overlevel ourselves, that removes all the challenge from future fights unless the system skews the odds in the favor of our opposition. Luckily for us, they can't do that without resorting to outlandish methods that make no sense in context. That means that if we're allowed to grind without restriction, we deprive them of a source of entertainment - and everyone knows that the sole reason gods exist is to give us squishy mortals a hard time and laugh their a**es off as they watch us while we struggle. So instead, they opt to stop the problem from happening in the first place, and they do that by slowing down our rate of growth to the point where it becomes as slow as a standard human's.

[All] Everyone's Favorite Drunkle: That doesn't sound so bad. Maybe now you'll experience what it feels like to actually earn your game-breaker authority.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: That may be your opinion, but remember: the only combat experience I had before I came to Patch was watching pixelated characters beat each other up. I haven't been training for however long your two prodigies have. The system's assistance helps, but implanted knowledge can only take me so far if I don't have the muscle memory to back it up.

[All] Big Daddy: So what you're saying is that you know what you can do and how to do it, but you don't have the experience that should naturally come with it?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Exactly. Even if my Unarmed level was higher than Yang's, I'd probably still lose to her in a fight, since all I do to grind it is beat up on a stationary target. Sure, I occasionally take the chance to go ham on a wandering Grimm with nothing but my own two hands, but those opportunities are few and far between, and my opponent's not human. I know how to punch, kick, block, and counter properly, but simply knowing how to do it without ever actually having done it doesn't make me an expert by any means. Fortunately, there's a workaround.

[All] Captain Dragon: And what's that?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: My stats. Can anyone tell me why?

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: I think I can. Every time you level up, your stats also go up. You automatically get stronger whenever you hit an EXP benchmark. That means that if you level up enough, experience ends up not mattering since you outmatch your enemy so much that you can just brute-force your way through whatever they throw at you.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Bingo. Even if you're the best swordsman in the world, all that prowess means nothing if your opponent's defenses are so ludicrous that you can't even scratch them. This also applies to my skills - my fighting style may lack experience, but I have a lot of moves that ignore that facet. Take my new Iron Will Skill, for instance - I don't need to do anything to actually trigger it, I just need to meet the conditions it has for activating. If I can just overpower my foes by simply flattening them with sheer stats and skill overuse, I can negate the fighting experience advantage that they have over me.

[All] Everyone's Favorite Drunkle: All right, I'll admit that it sounds nice, but a philosophy like that's just asking to be beaten down. Riddle me this: what happens if you end up getting the tables turned on you?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Run. Duh. Remember when you were chasing me back during my first day here? How do you think I escaped you?

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: ...it was the IDs, wasn't it? You created a pocket dimension, and hid inside.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Well, give the little reaper a prize! I know that school's all about teaching, but I didn't expect your IQ to jump that high! What kinda courses do they have at Signal?

[All] Captain Dragon: I see you're doing well in Introductory Battle Tactics, sis. Good job!

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Well, knowing when to fight and when to run is one of the most important things to know for survival…

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Besides, if I'm against someone that can shut down my escape options, then I'm pretty sure I'm already screwed by then.

[All] Bid Daddy: Yeah, if you're in a fight with someone or something that can block dimensional travel, then I wouldn't think you'd have a chance.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: So, now you see why the EXP reduction is such a big deal for me. Sure, I have around two years to catch up to you guys before Beacon rolls around, but that's still only two compared to the four-odd years that you have on me, not counting whatever combat prep you got from Tai and Qrow. If I can't match you in skill, I'll just have to make up for it with more power, but if I can't level up enough, I won't be able to measure up. You see the issue?

[All] Everyone's Favorite Drunkle: Okay, I can see how that makes sense. But it doesn't mean I have to like it, or that you have to settle for it. You don't need to sleep, right? That automatically extends your timeframe by a pretty large amount, since the average person needs at least six hours of rest to function properly. At the very least, that's six hours extra for all 700 days - give or take - that you have until Initiation arrives. Plus, nobody just trains all day, every day. But you can, and you can capitalize really hard on that. So don't go saying that farming is the only thing you need to do to win this game of yours, because like it or not, you said so yourself - you need to prepare for every possible outcome. Or are you just a big hypocrite?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: No, I'm just a lazy little s*** who only ever gets things done because other people tell him to.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Not true. How many Grimm KOs did you rack up without anyone asking?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: ...a lot?

[All] Captain Dragon: Exactly. So don't go beating yourself up just because you like to take it easy. Ruby's all for the new training schedule, but she also knows when to take a step back and cool off. Isn't that right, sis?

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Yeah! I love trying out all the cool things I can do after working on them a whole lot, but I also love just sitting on the cliffside and staring out at the ocean, or lying down and reading the newest comic or weapon magazine. Sometimes, you just need to slow down.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Heh. "Slow down," says the girl with the highest agility score of us kids.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Hey, it's not like I can change my class or pick where my stat points go! Not my fault that you're too slow!

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Oh. My f***ing. GOD. You just HAD to say THAT.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: What?! What did I say?!

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Nothing, nothing, just… inside joke. You wouldn't understand.

[All] Gunblades 'N Roses: Okaaaaaay…?

[All] SSJ Mercenary: Don't worry about it. In any case, I need to get back to shaping up. I'll be removing the chat from my HUD for a bit, so don't talk about me until I say I'm back.

[All] Captain Dragon: Will do. Try to have as much fun as you can, okay? All work and no play makes Zeiss a dull boy, after all.

[All] SSJ Mercenary: ...you know what, I won't discuss how or why you've seen that movie since I haven't watched it myself. Bye.

[All] Big Daddy: ...so what exactly was he talking about when he mentioned the first day chase?

[All] Everyone's Favorite Drunkle: Oh, Tai, buddy, it's a riot.

A/N: More of an omake this time, but it became a little too large for me to justify simply tacking it on to another chapter to myself. Reading this is completely optional and not required for regular enjoyment of the story, but it does provide a little bit of background, lets certain characters interact with each other, and this serves as a sort of introduction to the chat logs that will now be occasionally showcased at the end of a chapter. Sometimes there will be a focus on a small group of characters, while other times it will feature excerpts from general discussions containing messages from many different faces.

Since these logs will have lots, if not all of the characters that appear changing their usernames, this may end up resulting in confusion when the chat inevitably shows up in the main story again. But hey, nobody ever said that there were any rules against typing other peoples' names into the chat - only that it's generally frowned upon by the greater community of MMO players.

With that said, I hope you'll come to enjoy the little breathers these episodes provide.

Out!

[TRANSMISSION ENDED]