Chapter Twenty-Five: Forum? More like For-Dumb. Get it?

Just as Wade said before, the next couple of days pass with little fanfare.

No one talks to us, or gives us any sort of orders, we just sit and wait while occasionally going out to get food from the large mess hall in the main building. I even go so far as to ask Garf about our current situation, but he just tells me to go away.

It’s not all bad though. Having some free time has provided me with a chance to get to know some of the others a bit better. Also, it has allowed me to doom scroll through the Forum a bit and catch up on anything I was missing.

Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t missing much.

The cross-difficulty server sounded really interesting, but after exploring the server for a little while, I quickly found myself getting more annoyed than anything. The server itself only has one thread called ‘Global Chat,’ and the entirety of the thread is just complete and utter nonsense being spewed out.

[Forum]

< Server: Cross Difficulty General >

< Thread: Global Chat >

< Members: 2,452 >

< DeezNuts, NOR > – Does anyone know when June will show herself again?

< Yaga, NOR > – Nah, she said that she wouldn’t be around for a while after the Tutorial.

< Catboygirl, LOS > – Meow!

< Ryche69, LOS > – Wait we don’t get to see mommy June anymore? NOOOOOOO

< DeezNuts, NOR > – Dang that suckssssss

< Liberation, HAR > – Could any players from NOR or LOS difficulty tell me if there was any NPC with the name of Roger on your variant of Floor Two? The guards stationed at the wall keep passing rumors about him.

< YaoiLover, LOS > – Roger? I don’t even know her. 0_0

< Liberation, HAR > – I’m being serious. Do you know the NPC or not?

< Catboygirl, LOS > – Meow!

< ReaperOne, NOR > – Don’t know a Roger but I could prob beat his ass.

The global chat continues on with this crap nonstop. Anyone actually looking for information is ignored or trolled. The average chatter on this thread has turned from a mix of every difficulty, to now just LOS and NOR players. Any HAR or DIC players have retreated into their own difficulty’s threads and resigned themselves to just talking with each other. It was discovered that every group has their own variant of each floor, so information being passed around should have a similar to exact correlation with any one group’s floor in each difficulty.

The thread itself isn’t completely useless though, as if you pay attention enough, you can eek out some useful bits of info. For example, the reason people on the Forum refer to others as ‘players’ is because the ‘Goddess’ named ‘June’ apparently showed up in person to explain the purpose of The Pillar during the ‘Tutorial’ the other difficulties got for some reason. I obviously mention all of this with a grain of salt, as the very fact DIC difficulty didn’t receive any of this information makes me second guess just how legitimate any of it is.

Another boon of the global thread is that it provides the total member count of everyone in all of the difficulties put together. 2,452 is a pretty unique number, but after factoring in the mortality rate for Floor One of DIC, the number clearly points to there being a certain number of people who never made it to the second floor. Angus, who is basically the only one of us that has the patience to deal with the cross-difficulty server, has done the leg work for us and discovered that each group, regardless of difficulty, should have started with thirty people. Following this, he followed up with a few people from LOS, NOR, and HAR, to figure out what the group density spread was.

According to his math, The Pillar should be comprised of 90 groups of 30 people, which totals to 2,700 total players upon the start. Going even further, he explained that each difficulty has a different amount of total groups. LOS should have 50 groups, NOR then has 25, and HAR is at 10. The math works out, as that just leaves the 5 groups leftover for DIC which we already have confirmed.

Angus continues to go on into more specifics about each of the group’s breakdown and more extraneous information, but I tune out the rest of the lecture and instead open up the general thread for our difficulty.

[Forum]

< Server: Death is Certain >

< Thread: General >

< Members: 68 >

< WoopTiDo > – This Floor is already better than that stupid forest. At least here I can take a shower and get something to eat.

< UnironicallyNo > – Don’t get complacent. This is the highest difficulty for a reason, I feel like the better we have it now just spells a worse time for us later.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

< Niner > – Could anyone provide some information in regard to the start of F2? Our group has been waiting days now and nothing is happening.

< GlassHouse > – Don’t worry about it, my group XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

< GlassHouse > – Oh crap, I guess the System censors some stuff that everyone hasn’t gotten too yet. Sorry man.

< Niner > – I appreciate you trying.

< GlassHouse > – No problem! Stay safe out their guys!

Reading through some of the chat history, I don’t find much of importance and instead start typing for the first time. I haven’t bothered saying anything since I joined, but since the cross-difficulty chat is so useless, I think it would probably benefit me to establish a presence here just in case.

< GlassHouse > – No problem! Stay safe out their guys!

< Still > – Anyone have any new info on the ‘F0 Tutorial’ the global chat keeps talking about? I think it’s all a load of shit.